Ariane H 370

Martinu composed the one-act opera “Ariane” over the course of a single month, in June 1958. He prepared the libretto himself according to his friend Georges Neveux’s play “The Voyage of Theseus“ (1943). Most of the text was taken from the second and third act, besides Ariane’s lamentation at the beginning of the fourth act, which he adapted as a grand coloratura aria within the opera’s finale.

Soon after its completion, in summer 1958, and hoping for a world premiere at Milan’s La Scala, Martinu entered the opera into a composer’s competition organised by the Italian publishing house Ricordi to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding. When the contest was called off, Martinu offered the work to Bärenreiter in spring 1959. Both the full score and the vocal score (arranged by the composer) were published posthumously in 1960. The premiere took place at the municipal theatre in Gelsenkirchen in 1961.

The main source of this scholarly-critical edition is the autograph score, while the vocal parts are also based on the autograph vocal score as a referential source. The Appendix offers the original beginning of the work with an entirely different orchestration, which is also reproduced as a facsimile.