• Countless composers have had a fascination with the abandoned figure of Ariadne, or Arianna, who helped Theseus kill the Cretan Minotaur and ended up alone on the island of Naxos, saved by the love of Bacchus and immortalised in the stars.
Arianna (Alpha Classics), devised by the American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, with the ensemble Arcangelo directed by Jonathan Cohen, features three cantatas with Ariadne as the starting point. In Alessandro Scarlatti’s Ebra d’amor fuggia, drunk with love and then distraught, Arianna unleashes her fury, calling on whirlpools and sea monsters to tear the treacherous Theseus limb from limb. Quite right too.
Handel’s Ah! Crudel, nel pianto mio (some of which was reworked in his opera Agrippina) doesn’t name the betrayed lover, but the emotions are intense and clear. Haydn’s lovely cantata Arianna a Naxos has no redemption through Bacchus and ends in tragedy. With playing of verve and style by Arcangelo, this rewarding album offers a fine platform for Lindsey, pure-voiced, pliant, expressive – and versatile.
• By happy chance, the British soprano Mary Bevan has included Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos on The Divine Muse (Signum Classics), accompanied by piano (her duo partner is the pianist Joseph Middleton) rather than ensemble.
A singer with real dramatic power, much loved on the opera stage, Bevan gives heartfelt urgency to Arianna’s final Ah! Che morir vorrei (Ah! How I long to die). She and Middleton have devised an absorbing recital, predominantly of Schubert and Wolf, based on ideas of myth and divinity. Each song is a story, feelingly told. We’re lucky to have singers like Lindsey and Bevan, who use knowledge as well as talent to produce fresh, illuminating programmes such as these.
• Worth revisiting (on BBC Sounds): Lucie Skeaping’s exploration of Ariadne in her Early Music Show from May 2018, including a chance to hear Monteverdi’s Arianna fragment and music by Porpora and Marcello. Or discover, via an old but authoritative edition of Building a Library, how Richard Strauss forged high art and low in his opera Ariadne auf Naxos.
