Ariadne auf Naxos by the Nederlandse Reisopera is making history.

Many a director is at a loss when it comes to Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. Not surprisingly. In the prologue, of about three quarters of an hour, the composer is told, via the 'Haushoffmeister' of Vienna's richest man, that he is expected to perform his opera buffa simultaneously with the opera seria of Zerbinetta's commedia dell'arte-like dance troupe. Then it's intermission. And only after intermission does the opera proper follow. The two worlds remain largely separate. In the prologue, the composer was central, but in the play proper he is conspicuous by his absence, as is the Haushoffmeister. And Vienna's richest man? However much his influence shines through, we never see him. Dramaturgically a disaster.

And that is not all: The role of the composer is to be sung by a woman; the role of the Haushoffmeister is a speaking role; the libretto contains impossible, and often out of sync with the music, stage directions; the orchestra, though small, is highly unusual; and burlesque and pseudo neoclassical, as well as almost Wagnerian Tristan und Isolde-like sounds alternate... And then there is the 10-minute coloratura aria for Zerbinetta, which the Queen of the Night from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte definitely to the crown.

A serious liflafje

How to resolve this? Directors taking the easy way out might magnify the comic elements and see the final duet as a triumph of 'real' opera over low-level entertainment. Conductors might perhaps lay on the differences in the musical worlds nice and thick. But: both Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannstahl saw, despite many difficulties and conflicts between them, Ariadne auf Naxos, as a serious hitchhiker.

Although it seems as if Strauss is contrasting two strictly separate musical worlds, when you take the score it is far from the case. More and more, the two coincide in the orchestration, and even well before the glorious finale, they frequently meet in the same chord. It is astonishing how the Noord Nederlands Orkest, conducted by Antonino Fogliani, manages to show just that. No easy path is chosen here. Initially it may be somewhat angular and abrupt, but then, during the scene in which the composer and Zerbinetta find each other, something magical happens, both on stage and in the orchestra pit.

Gold leaf

This fusion of seemingly completely different worlds is the basis for the extremely musical direction of Laurence Dale - himself a celebrated singer and conductor. He is helped by Gary McCann's phenomenal set; a majestic art gallery belonging to Vienna's richest man, with huge busts of Greek gods. That the gold leaf with which they are painted leaks off - symbolising the fading of both high and low - foreshadows the drama that follows and the divine that reveals itself to everyone at the end of the opera.

Young God

Der Haushofmeister, in this production for once not a role of an aging actor, but of the young Stefan Kurt Reiter, literally shows himself as a young god at the side of the (here staged) richest man in Vienna (Hanz Timans). Indeed, after the interval they briefly hold hands and both make their way to the rock where, according to myth, Ariadne laments her fate. A rock inhabited here not only by Echo and the nymphs, but also by all kinds of dancers as well as the composer and Zerbinetta. The whole thing is breathtaking, not least because of the prefectly cast Karin Strobos (composer), Ariadne (Soojin Moon-Sebastian) and Jennifer France (Zerbinetta).

On the also wonderfully fitting video projections by Silbersatz Film in the overall concept, we literally see the cosmos looming up after a calm sea.

Wonderful find

Having the composer look at Ariadne's aria almost in love at the edge of the playing surface after the interval is a stroke of luck. At a time when he is still only in love with his own music, and certainly not with the soprano who argued with the tenor during the prologue about who should sing the most notes. Only to show him really on fire when Zerbinetta sings 'Groβmächtige Prinzessin' - and how!

In a perfect remake of the music video for Madonna's Material girl, complete with feathers and proper poses and dance steps, she is lifted onto the rock by the four dancers. Not done during such a notoriously difficult aria? "If you trust each other completely then such a lift is smoother than a ride in a lift," a dancer once told me.

Orgy

When Bacchus finally arrives and expresses his love for Ariadne, an orgy reminiscent of Wagner's Venus Mountain from Tannhäuser or Queens clip at I want to break free, while text and music in the foreground remain precisely a kind of Wagner's Fliegende Holländer. After all the water, fire, sky and stars, the final scene is an almost cosmic orgasm in which we vaguely but unmistakably recognise the bust of the instigator of it all.

Dale's  Ariadne auf Naxos moves, grabs at the throat. "To make people cry, you have to make them laugh first," he learned from Peter Brook. We see it on this night. Opera history is being made here.