★★★★☆
It will surely go down as one of those “I was there” moments. The Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen is still only 30. Now she has made her British stage debut in the title role of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and as well as towering over the cast physically (she is as tall as a Valkyrie, which bodes well), vocally she was in another league. So penetrating is the Davidsen instrument that by the end of the run there will be sheep in adjoining Sussex fields who are word-perfect on von Hofmannsthal’s libretto.
Ariadne is a conundrum, a “symbol of human solitude”, as described in Strauss’s backstage/front-stage dramedy, but, by the end of the night, a woman transformed by love or, depending on your