Martinů: Ariane. Opera in 1 Act

Supraphon is reissuing in a new cover its digital recording of Bohuslav Martinů's last opera, Ariadne. It was written in 1958, the penultimate year of the composer's life, concurrently with The Greek Passion. The compositional process was imbued with an outburst of creative invention which enabled Martinů to complete the work in less than five weeks. Two decades after Julietta (1937), he returned to another text from the pen of his friend, the French playwright Georges Neveux whose surrealist view of theworld harmonized with Martinů's own during his final creative period, by when he had gone a long way from his Impressionist beginnings. This recording from the second half of the 1980s, featuring a star-studded international cast, will doubtless re-create for you an echo of the atmosphere which nurtured the composer's spectacular creative drive, conjured up here with the characteristic wisdom and experience by the baton of Václav Neumann.