'This unceasingly wonderful "Ariadne" was Covent Garden opera
   at its most scintillating, from the first (and astonishing)
   visual coup near the start, when designer Herbert Murauer, having
   established Christopher Quest's gloriously meticulous Major Domo
   in his plush entry hall, ratchets up the entire stage -- yes,
   as with "Sophie's Choice", the Covent Garden machinery, so doomed
   in Haitink's opening "Falstaff", worked a treat -- to reveal a
   locker room basement below, in which the hapless singers and
   actors huddle in suitably shapeless -- but terrifically well
   plotted -- melees, scattered round the set like melancholy
   cast-off props.  The opera never really looked back from that
   moment: all else was plain (Aegean) sailing.'

Roderic Dunnett writes in today's illustrated Sunday feature at Music &
Vision:

   http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2002/12/ariadne1.htm?a

Keith Bramich
Technical editor, Music & Vision
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