I listened to the Sinopoli recording of Ariadne auf Naxos again over the weekend. It’s a wonderful performance of one of my all-time favorite operas, a brilliant, ironic, profound, silly, rich, just about perfect match of story and song, words and music. The section from Ariadne’s “Es gibt ein Reich” (“There is a land”) to Zerbinetta’s “Grossmächtiger Princessin” (literally, “Greatly powerful princess”, but meaning something more like, “Your Excellency”) is one of the most satisfying twelve minutes or so of opera that I know. I could listen to it over and over again.