Historical Background and Musical Analysis
Ariadne auf Naxos belonged to the genre known as German melodrama, an attempt is to merge spoken dialogue with music, making it the only form of opera with no singing. Brandes wrote the text of Ariadne auf Naxos for his wife Charlotte, a famous singer and actress of the day. She played the part of Ariadne in the premiere. The basis for Brandes' libretto was a cantata by Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg. However, Tim Ashley in his review of a 2005 performance of the work, suggests that Brandes may have been influenced by Virgil's Aeneid, "Theseus is a man of destiny and conscience; Ariadne has no Bacchus to redeem her and instead commits suicide after seeing Theseus sail away".
Mozart attended a production of Ariadne auf Naxos and became a great admirer of Benda's compositions. In 1778 he wrote to his father expressing the desire to compose a duodrama entitled Semiramide on the model of Benda's Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea. He believed at the time that melodrama was the way to solve the problems of operatic recitative. However, Mozart never got around to creating a duodrama. He did create a miniature melodrama within his unfinished operetta, Zaide, written in 1780. Other composers who admired and were influenced by Benda's melodramas include Carl Maria von Weber and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Read more about this topic: Ariadne Auf Naxos (Benda)
Famous quotes containing the words historical, background, musical and/or analysis:
“We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)