Second performances are different, from the first, from all others.
After the premiere, the level of intensity drops, the atmosphere changes,
but the middle-of-the-run paradigm doesn't apply yet.

And so it was tonight when Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" was
presented by the San Francisco Opera's in the second performance (of six)
after Monday night's premiere.  The rules applied, but the outcome was
vastly different.  It was a far better, enchanting, memorable performance.

Monday's heroes and heroines were there again: the brilliant John Cox-
Robert Perdziola production, Jun Markl's all-of-one-piece musical direction,
Deborah Voigt's superb Ariadne, Laura Claycomb's astonishing Zerbinetta,
Thomas Moser's exactly-right Bacchus.  But a new star emerged: Strauss.

Already, at the premiere of this grand Chicago Lyric Opera production,
there was a minimum of obvious effort - especially in Claycomb's
vocal-dramatic presentation of a very human and appealing Zerbinetta -
but tonight, it seemed that all the singers and the whole orchestra just
tossed it all off. . . lovingly, quietly, effortlessly.

Seldom has the trite adjective applied more accurately in the War
Memorial: a magic night, especially the extended finale, an hour-long
stretch of Ariadne's pining for Theseus, Zerbinetta's superhuman "diversion"
of "Grossmachtige Prinzessin," the arrival of Bacchus, and the happy,
bittersweet ("I will not forget my sorrow") ending.  Tonight, it was all
one continuous sweep, Strauss filling the house with sustained enchantment,
hushed, deep silence embracing the heavenly music, as points of light
swayed in the dark sky, in an amazing counterpoint-and-conflation.

Can it possibly get better? We'll find out on Saturday, at No. 3.

Janos Gereben/SF
[log in to unmask]