Meeting the challenge of ‘Ariadne’

“Ariadne’’ begins with a prologue. We are backstage in the house theater of a Viennese count who disrupts plans for post-banquet entertainment by ordering that the two acts he has called for — a commedia dell’arte troupe, and a new opera seria — be performed simultaneously. How they do this, the count’s major domo tells the players, is up to them. This is a fine comic hook, but there is time for some moralizing. Hoffmansthal gives the self-involved young composer of the commissioned opera, deeply indignant at the cuts, a paean to “the holy art’’ of music. When he is knocked off-balance by a hot kiss from the commedia troupe’s zany, flirty Zerbinetta, we are set up beautifully for the deeper theme of the opera to come: fidelity and dedication to an ideal vs. acceptance of uncertainty and the need to gather rosebuds while we may.

The opera-within-the-opera that follows is congealed genius, and it can rarely have been funnier. In the middle of the mythological story of Ariadne, abandoned by her lover Theseus on the isle of Naxos, pining in her cave, the comedians arrive, dressed (as Siff has it) for Beach Blanket Bingo. They find a role in trying to cheer up Ariadne, who clearly needs it. Zerbinetta sings a very long aria, complete with trills, runs, and two A-flats. Ariadne, unmoved, resolves to await death. She’s lucky this is a comic opera. When a stranger arrives, she takes him to be Hermes, the messenger of death. It turns out to be the god Bacchus, released from Circe’s spell, who falls in love with her. The opera ends with a love duet as beautiful as Tristan and Isolde’s. The trifle has turned very serious indeed.