A Love Letter to Ariadne auf Naxos
Images from the Metropolitan Opera | Ariadne auf Naxos (metopera.org)
Like most people, I enjoy winding down with a book, a movie, or a tv show when I get home from work. And like most, I face the familiar problem of what to enjoy. Which movie should I stream? Which book should I open?
Recently I finished two excellent books, Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich and Agatha Christie’s spy novel They Came to Baghdad. Ivan Ilyich is more profound and, though much shorter, took me a longer time to read, and more focus and energy to appreciate. They Came to Baghdad swept me away, and I gobbled it up in two days. It offered me a much-needed escape from my day-to-day stress. I expect to read Ivan Ilyich again, but probably not the Christie novel, as much as I liked it. But that’s the thing about so-called “high” and “low” art. Generally, high art is more challenging to enjoy. It often takes a great deal of work, time, and attention for the effort to pay off, which is the reason why works like King Lear or To the Lighthouse are not exhausted after one reading, but instead only become richer and more pleasurable the longer we spend with them. Low art, on the other hand, is designed to grab the attention of its audience immediately. The American writer David Foster Wallace put it well when he said in his essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” that low art “is not Low because it is vulgar or prurient or dumb” but instead because of “its desire to appeal to and enjoy the attention of unprecedented numbers of people.”
Of course, this “high-versus-low” is an enormous oversimplification. Countless works of art combine aspects of both “high” and “low,” making them difficult to classify, and we could argue endlessly about the artistic merit of almost anything. Regardless, I expect that this high-low dichotomy exists in some form in almost every art-lover’s imagination, probably with many deeply personal and emotional beliefs.
I’m not here to make judgements on whether Kanye West is the equal of Mozart or whether the Harry Potter books will be revered as classics in a hundred years. While interesting, these questions are too large to discuss here. Nor do I wish to imply that “low” art is bad art (I use “high” and “low” only in the absence of better terms). I am not talking about artistic quality but about the way art is crafted and consumed. What’s important to recognize, however, is that they are in competition: on a Friday night, you’re either going to see Swan Lake at the ballet, or the new Mean Girls musical, not both. When you sit down to read, only one book will be open on your lap, but will it be Shakespeare or James Patterson?
These things can be difficult to talk about since they can be so emotionally fraught—understandably so since questions of what kind of art we choose to spend our time with and whether certain works of art are worth our attention are not always addressed in a fair or respectful way. We all know the snob who spurns low tastes and needs you to know about it. Likewise we all know that expressing a love for Proust is not worth the eye-roll or accusations of elitism—I can’t tell you how many first dates I’ve been on where I mention Tchaikovsky or James Joyce and find my date emotionally withdraw, writing me off as a poser. Works of art do this too: think of how classical music is often depicted in the mainstream media.
It still astounds me that the work of art that addresses this question the most beautifully, fairly and profoundly is an opera—the “highest” of “high” genres—the 1912 opera Ariadne auf Naxos with music by Richard Strauss and a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Where one might most expect a certain snobbery, one finds instead a balanced assessment where high art is not idealized and low art is not dismissed as insignificant.
In the opera, a wealthy patron enlists a troupe of Italian comic actors and an opera company to perform for a dinner party. When the dinner begins to run late, the majordomo informs them all that there is no time to enjoy the opera and the burlesque show separately, and so all the entertainers must perform at the same time.
Chaos ensues as both groups, the “high artists” and the “low artists,” scoff at performing alongside each other. Zerbinetta, the headliner of the comedy troupe, rushes off to get into costume. The composer is livid, his artistic vision hopelessly sullied. While the prima donna and the tenor bicker over whose arias will be cut, the clowns quip that their comedy will prevent the opera singers from putting the audience to sleep. The squabbling, the last-minute arrangements, the egos and caricatures make this first act a comic delight.
Zerbinetta and Ariadne, from the opera Ariadne of Naxos.
In the second act, the “opera” is performed in full, as each of the performers scrambles to make things work. The prima donna of the first act is now Ariadne in all her glory, lamenting her abandonment by Theseus on the isle of Naxos. Zerbinetta and her clown troupe enter and try to cheer up, and the clowns compete for Zerbinetta’s affection. She makes her selection, crowning it with a love duet. The tenor then shows up as Bacchus, and in typical operatic fashion, Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love and sing a rapturous duet as the opera ends.
It always delights me to watch each of the performers seemingly “improvise” how to interact with one another, falling in and out of character, exasperated at being upstaged and yet somehow committing to it, surprised by interruptions but “Yes And”-ing their way forward. Further, what makes it such a compelling depiction of the way high art and low art compete for our attention is how Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal explore this rivalry so clearly, richly, and respectfully. Here, neither side is made into a straw man, and neither is idealized. High art is presented as occasionally difficult, boring, and affected even as it deals with more profound ideas; low art is presented as somewhat mind-numbing, silly and stupid, even if it delights and holds our attention more easily.
By contrast, the 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera is an excellent example of a work that makes a straw man out of one side. This film pits two divas against each other, the prima donna Carlotta Guidicelli, and the ingénue Christine Daye. While in the stage version of Phantom Carlotta is presented as a talented singer with more classical vocal technique than Christine, in the 2004 film, she is voiced by another singer feigning shrill and affected opera singing that not even opera lovers would enjoy. While turning Carlotta into a fool serves the story in other ways, it nevertheless makes a mockery of high opera and classical vocal technique.
Like The Phantom of the Opera, Strauss’s opera pits the prima donna, Ariadne, and Zerbinetta against each other, and both act as representatives of their respective art forms. Unlike, the Phantom film, however, Ariadne auf Naxos keeps the fight fair. Even so, Zerbinetta’s comic panache makes her a welcome palette cleanser after Ariadne’s scenes. I remember my first time seeing this opera live (Cincinnati Opera, July 2019, in a production so unforgettable I paid to see it twice), and remember the thrill of seeing Zerbinetta suddenly appear. This is no accident: true to the spirit of low art, Strauss takes care to make Zerbinetta’s music more immediately appealing than the music of Ariadne, Bacchus and the nymphs. And he times things so well: often right when my attention was beginning to flag during one of Ariadne’s melodramatic airs, Zerbinetta, accompanied by her clownish admirers, would enter as a welcome comic contrast. Strauss even honors Zerbinetta with the prize aria of the entire opera, the coloratura soprano showpiece, Großmächtige Prinzessin.
Nevertheless, Strauss gives Ariadne the last laugh, since her final duet with Bacchus ends the opera. No composer in history knew how to end an opera as effectively as Richard Strauss, who often reserved his best music for the last twenty minutes of the work, as in Salome or Rosenkavalier. Here that pride of place is given to Ariadne rather than Zerbinetta. Even after repeated listens, this lengthy closing duet seems somewhat inscrutable to me. And this is what makes it high art: although I don’t fully understand it, I know that I’ll be able to return to it for years to come and always find something more to appreciate in it.
But above all, I return to Ariadne because its creators, Strauss and Hofmannsthal, have a deep understanding of the various blessings art can impart, and how different works of art improve our lives in myriad ways. Just as no food can offer every vitamin we need, no single work can offer every benefit we come to art to enjoy. And so our life is fuller and lovelier for variety. At one moment we might need Lizzo, at another Liszt, but ultimately both, or their like, should find their ways into our lives and into our playlists.
Jacob Martin is a freelance oboist and English hornist in the Cincinnati area. He regularly plays with orchestras in Columbus, Dayton, Evansville, Owensboro, and Anderson.