Home listening - a good week for Ariadne

The Guardian 0

The mythical Cretan princess looms large in new releases by Kate Lindsey and Mary Bevan

• Countless composers have had a fascination with the abandoned figure of Ariadne, or Arianna, who helped Theseus kill the Cretan Minotaur and ended up alone on the island of Naxos, saved by the love of Bacchus and immortalised in the stars.

Arianna (Alpha Classics), devised by the American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, with the ensemble Arcangelo directed by Jonathan Cohen, features three cantatas with Ariadne as the starting point. In Alessandro Scarlatti’s Ebra d’amor fuggia, drunk with love and then distraught, Arianna unleashes her fury, calling on whirlpools and sea monsters to tear the treacherous Theseus limb from limb. Quite right too.