Strauss fans are having a good time at present. Hard on the heals of the Royal Opera's outstanding Rosenkavalier come concert performances of Ariadne auf Naxos conducted by Simon Rattle, which scale similar heights of intensity and abandon. This is no mean feat, for of all Strauss's operas, Ariadne is perhaps the least suited to the concert format. In either of its versions, it's an opera about opera and also - in the 1916 edition which Rattle favours - a reflection on the power of theatrical performance to transcend the backstage tensions which go to create it (the better 1912 original posits a diametrically opposite view).
As such, it screams out to be staged, and there's a terrible danger that its impact will be blunted and the cut and thrust of its argument will be lost, when it's done with singers line up in evening dress clutching scores. Nevertheless, this was a superlative achievement, with Rattle visibly relishing every note of the piece and the LSO - apart from a couple of dodgy moments from the brass - playing as if their lives depended on it. There were plenty of sexy, translucent textures, gorgeous string and woodwind solos, and throughout an overwhelming sense of drive and energy.
Rattle's Ariadne is Anne Schwanewilms, making her London debut and taking over at short notice from the indisposed Katerina Dalayman (not an easy thing to do). A Barenboim discovery, Schwanewilms is big in Berlin, and, one hopes, will become so here. The sound is rich, opulent, all thrilling top notes and creamy low ones, and the role's colossal range is well within her capabilities. She cultivates a glamourous, statuesque hauteur on the platform - not at all inappropriate here - and suggests from the outset that Ariadne is a woman who has sublimated her sexuality into spiritual yearning. At the end of the opera she yields to Johan Botha's clarion Bacchus with tangible eroticism. She has outstanding potential - and one hopes she won't wreck it by doing too much too soon as some singers are wont to do.
As Zerbinetta, Christine Schafer proves a perfect foil. If Schwanewilms is unusually sexy, then Schafer is unusually serious. Anything but the stereotypical tart, she looks svelte and Dietrich-like in a tall coat and is by turns touchingly vulnerable and strongly proto-feminist. Her big aria, advocating equal rights to pleasure for men and women, is beautifully voiced - this is by far and away her best performance since her Lulu at Glyndebourne. Cult mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager is the Composer. The role lies a fraction high for her - you're occasionally aware of effort - but her passionate declamation is riveting. The rest of the casting - which includes Thomas Allen as the Music Master and Christopher Maltman as Harlequin - is luxurious beyond belief.
Ariadne auf Naxos is at the Barbican tonight. Box office: 0171-638 8891.
