arianna

Arianna is an opera in eight scenes by the British composer Alexander Goehr, premiered at the Royal Opera House, London, in 1995. It is set to the libretto (in Italian), by Ottavio Rinuccini, used by Claudio Monteverdi in his 1608 opera, L'Arianna. The opera is Goehr's op. 58.

Although Rinuccini's libretto survives, the greater part of Monteverdi's music for the opera, originally performed in Mantua in 1608, has been lost. All that remains is Arianna's lament, a solo aria which Monteverdi published separately in 1623. Goehr sets most (but not all) of the original libretto, (which is based on the classical story of Ariadne and Theseus from Ovid's Heroides), preserving the lament but interspersing it with choral episodes. The orchestration is contemporary, including contrabassoon, saxophone, Akai sampler and electric guitar, as is the harmonic language

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