L'ARIANNA

From Monteverdi’s Ariadne only the libretto and part of the score of the fourth act containing the famous lament of the abandoned title character have survived. The loose reconstruction has given rise to a new theatrical form that surrounds and illuminates the rarely preserved musical fragment with new visual-musical relationships.

Ottavio Rinuccini’s original libretto is the guide to tell the story of a woman who transgresses all prohibitions for love, humbles herself and is subsequently abandoned by her lover on an inhospitable island. At the moment of her most difficult personal crisis, when she is already saying goodbye to life, she meets the god of wine, who makes her his wife. The opera is reconstructed on the basis of contemporary sources scattered throughout the archives of Europe. The world premiere of the free reconstruction of the lost opera took place in Lipník nad Bečvou on 24 May 2018. In February 2020, it won the Audience Award at the Prague Opera Festival.

Music by Claudio Monteverdi, Vít Zouhar, Tomáš Hanzlík

Ariadne – Hana Holodňáková, Venus, Dorilla – Juliana Synková, Cupid, 1st fisherman, Bacchus – Martin Ptáček, Apollo, Theseus – Ondřej Benek, Counsellor, 2nd fisherman, Jupiter – Jiří Poláček, harpsichord – Ilona Růčková, viola da gamba – Jakub Michl, organ positive – Martin Smutný. Direction and musical staging – Tomáš Hanzlík.

The opera is presented on the occasion of the closing of the METAMORPHOSES exhibition.