Ariadne auf Naxos review – Karita Mattila is glorious as Strauss's heroine

Prima donnas: it takes one to know one. The central character in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos is not really the Greek heroine marooned on an island, but the singer who plays her in an after-dinner entertainment for the Richest Man in Vienna. We meet this Prima Donna in the Prologue shouting "Don't you know who I am?" at the low-class comedy players with whom she is forced to share the stage. But she shouldn't have to shout it at the audience: the role requires a 24-carat star. And in the Royal Opera's latest revival of Christof Loy's 2002 staging, it gets one.

Karita Mattila has waited a long time before taking on the Prima Donna, and this first attempt is an unbridled, ultimately touching assumption. Nobody on stage is supposed to know how to deal with Ariadne until Bacchus enters to rescue her, and that's just how it is here; the others seem almost mesmerised by Mattila the stage animal, even when she is only sitting at the dressing table that, in Herbert Murauer's elegant but muted set, stands in for her rock. She sings her monologues with passionate abandon, the top register mostly soaring above the orchestra, the low notes sometimes sweet, sometimes forceful. It doesn't all sound pretty, and it's perhaps not the interpretation you would most want to own on CD; in the theatre, though, it is a glorious performance.

But this opera is not a star vehicle: it's an ensemble piece, and the cast here is notably strong. Ruxandra Donose is the ardent Composer, her voice gleaming, and Roberto Saccà's incisive yet honeyed tenor makes Bacchus's punishing music sound almost easy. Thomas Allen returns as the dishevelled Music Master, and Ed Lyon's preening Dancing Master is a treat. Ariadne's attendants are beautifully sung by Sofia Fomina, Kiandra Howarth and Karen Cargill, and the men of the comedy troupe, led by Markus Werba's muscle-pumping Harlequin, combine nicely. That leaves Jane Archibald as Zerbinetta, the free and easy star of the troupe, who dashes off her dazzling cascades with smiling ease, but in this company seems just a little small-scale vocally.

Conducting the work that launched his tenure here, Antonio Pappano makes the sweeping full-orchestra passages sound glowing, the pared-down chamber-style episodes snappy, and he supports his singers throughout. The stage rising during the overture to reveal the basement where the performers are gathering is a coup that is never matched; but Loy directs his singers convincingly. You might find the story more clearly told elsewhere, but you'd be lucky to find its musings on life and love more evocatively put across.