Die schöne und getreue Ariadne

Directed by Thomas de Vries, Ensemble Mattiacis delights the May Festival audience with a new early music production every year.

After being lost for several centuries, Johann Georg Conradi's "Die schöne und getreue Ariadne" (The Beautiful and Faithful Ariadne) was only rediscovered in the 20th century. Up until then, it was a mystery what this extremely successful opera might have sounded like, the melodies of which were like popular hits in 17th-century Hamburg. Johann Georg Conradi was already composing German operas here a generation before Handel and Telemann. Anyone hearing baroque opera in German for the first time might be surprised at how modern and effective the music is, especially when the libretto is also easy to follow.

The score of "Ariadne" delights with extraordinary beauty: virtuoso arias, love duets, energetic choruses, commedia dell'arte and mad scenes.