Ariadne auf Naxos DVD 2013

Director Katharina Thoma sets Richard Strauss’s comedy in a country house in the South Downs (a surrogate for Glyndebourne), immediately before and during the Second World War. Hofmannsthals’ conceit – that a hapless young composer has to accept the simultaneous performance of his new tragic opera with a burlesque from a commedia dell’arte troupe - is turned into a touching wartime drama of nurses, invalids, airmen – and of painful delusions and soul-searching, before final happiness.

Composer: Richard Strauss

Director: Katharina Thoma

Conductor: Vladimir Jurowski with London Philharmonic Orchestra

Cast: Soile Isokoski, Laura Claycomb, Sergey Skorokhodov, Thomas Allen, Kate Lindsey 

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute

Language: German

Available in DVD and Blu-ray format