Our summer opera season got underway on 4 June at 7pm with a live stream – direct from Glyndebourne opera house – of Ariadne auf Naxos. Strauss's 1916 comic work is an opera about opera and the competing forms of high, and low, art.

Listen to Peggy Reynolds and David Nice discuss the piece and how it successfully blends the two contrasting forms of opera seria and commedia dell'arte in in our podcast here. If you are new to the work, try Tom Service's guide to Strauss's music (with a little help from a classic 1950s recording of the work by the likes of Karajan and Schwarzkopf).

For further background reading, here's Michael Kennedy's programme essay on the collaboration between Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, while the synopsis and tonight's cast list is here.

The new production, by German director Katharina Thoma, locates the opera in an English country house during the second world war. Here, Thoma tells Tom Service about her vision for the piece – a vision that hasn't found much favour with the critics.

This is your chance to make up your own mind. Watch it, free, with us tonight. The curtain rises at 7pm; the interval is 7.45-8.15pm, the second act finishes at 9.30pm. And, if you can't make it tonight, you can watch the entire opera on demand from tomorrow until 31 August. Tell us what you think in the comments below, or join the conversation on twitter with #ariadne. Bookmark this page to watch it live