THE SONGBIRD: Britt-Marie Aruhn (sometimes written as Britt Marie) was born in Sweden in 1943. She studied singing at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, where she won both the Jenny Lind and Christina Nilsson prizes. Her debut at the Royal Opera came in 1974 as Olympia, and she maintained a steady career as a leading lyric-coloratura soprano with the company. Other notable appearances included Gilda and Sophie in Dresden in 1976, Sophie in Munich in 1977, and both roles again in Vienna in 1978 and 1981. At Covent Garden, she was Zerbinetta in 1978, and Zdenka in Paris in 1981. Aruhn was a staple in Brussels during the 1980s singing Musetta, Massenet's La Fee, Rossini's Countess Adele, Adele in "Die Fledermaus," Melisande, Lucio Cinna, Susanna, and Sandrina, as well as concerts including Haydn's "Creation." Aruhn's was the First Lady in the famous 1975 film adaptation of "The Magic Flute" by Ingmar Bergman.

THE MUSIC: Richard Strauss's opera "Ariadne auf Naxos" premiered twice. The first was in 1912 in Stuttgart where it was conceived as a short opera to accompany a new adaption of Moliere's play, "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme." This version was performed in other cities over the next year (Zurich, Munich, Prague, and London), but the play/opera hybrid concept proved ineffective (and way too long at over six hours). Working with his librettist/partner Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss refashioned the opera as a stand-alone work with a newly added prologue, which premiered in this new form to success in Vienna in 1916. This version of the opera was quickly embraced by critics, artists, and the public -- it has since been recorded commercially many times and is performed regularly around the world. Only rarely have there been staged or even concert productions of the earlier 1912 version and there is only one commercial recording. "Ariadne" is one of my absolute favorite operas -- I love its witty libretto, its satiric character archetypes, its intriguing themes about art, and Strauss's simply astounding music. Zerbinetta's grand aria "Grossmächtige Prinzessin" is arguably the most daunting coloratura showpiece ever written -- incomprehensibly so in the longer, higher 1912 version, but still insane in the 1916 version. It's not just long at nearly 12 minutes; it doesn't merely contain a full armada of coloratura vocal acrobatics (trills, cadenzas, scales, filigree, high notes, wide leaps, and so on); it's not only the freewheeling harmonic structures -- no, this scene demands a level of virtuosic musicianship and theatrical flair that is simply unmatched. Zerbinetta is a coloratura soubrette on steroids! In this scene and role, Strauss invented an entirely new musical language to exploit the unique glories of the coloratura soprano voice. He revisited this proprietary mode of highly gymnastic vocalism a few other times afterwards: in the art song "Amor" (1918), with Fiakermilli in "Arabella" (1933), and for Aminta in "Die schweigsame Frau" (1935).

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