SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Cast

Leonore – Lisa Milne

Florestan – Dennis O’Neill

Don Pizarro – Robert Hayward

Rocco – Clive Bayley

Marzelline – Elizabeth Donovan

Jaquino – Robin Tritschler

Don Fernando – Quentin Hayes

First Prisoner – Simon Curtis

Second Prisoner – Stephen Wells

Production

Conductor – Lothar Koenigs

Director, Designer & Lighting Designer – Giuseppe Frigeni

Costume Designer – Amélie Haas

Chorus Master – Stephen Harris

Sometimes even a somewhat less than perfect production can be of value. It has been, I confess, some time since I listened to, or gave a great deal of thought, to Fidelio. This interesting – if flawed - production refreshed my sense of what a remarkable work it is. One cannot always say that after a night in the opera house.

Fidelio has its limitations and its problems, but is yet a work of great profundity, of real moral and intellectual weight. Beethoven, as has so often been said, was not a natural man of the theatre. He lacked that Shakespearean (or Mozartean) capacity to think and feel himself into the whole range of human nature. His ‘drama’ is essentially of ideas rather than people, of abstractions rather than individuals (these are not, of course absolute differences, merely differences of emphasis). The libretto is resonant with abstract nouns and Giuseppe Frigeni appeared to have taken his cue from this in the manner of his production. Determinedly non-naturalistic, resolutely minimalist in its use of set and props, the production made little or no attempt to persuade us of the individual psychological and emotional depths of the characters; its spareness, its avoidance of extended physical or emotional contact between characters, had the effect of focussing one’s mind on the music and on the moral and socio-political patterns embodied in that music.

This concentration on the work’s underlying structure invited recognition of the ways in which Fidelio exists in dialogue with so many of its operatic predecessors, not least in its attempted reclamation and reconciliation of motifs from opera buffa and opera seria. Though it has obvious affinities with ‘rescue’ operas such as Cherubini’s Lodoïska or Les Deux Journées, it looks through and beyond such works to what one might reasonably regard as the ur-myth of opera. As Peter Conrad puts it in his book A Song of Love and Death: The Meaning of Opera (1987), “Orpheus is opera’s founder, and he presides over it throughout its subsequent history”. He does so here, too, in a special sense. Fidelio effects a significant inversion of the Orpheus story; the wife seeks to rescue the husband from a hellish place of confinement (a gender inversion reflected in the names of the characters, in which the woman bears the heroic leonine name and the man the flower-name with its passive implications). The extended Orphic allusion gives the more than merely sentimental or personal force to the finale’s affirmation of the power of female fidelity as the chorus of prisoners declares “Nie wird es zu hoch besungen, / Retterin des Gatten sein”.

But there are, of course, risks in the strategy adopted by Fregini. Clarifying ideas, respecting the abstract nouns that matter in Fidelio – nouns like Courage, Love, Fidelity, Freedom, Responsibility et al – is all very well, but the refusal to attempt any kind of theatrical realisation of so many of the libretto’s concrete particulars (the libretto’s contrasts of light and dark were inadequately respected, the chains supposedly holding Florestan were invisible; the bread and wine given him by Leonore and Rocco were entirely metaphorical, to name but a few instances) left the singers dangerously exposed - dangerously, because this was not an especially strong cast.

Lisa Milne (who was not well-served by the costume she was required to wear) is a singer of both actual achievement and future promise, but as yet lacks the weight of voice and tonal variety to do full justice to Leonore; Dennis O’Neill – though his German left something to be desired – achieved a certain poignant and stoic dignity and produced some good vocal touches, without ever being fully plausible. Robert Hayward’s Don Pizarro was dangerously close to caricature (but such was perhaps inevitable in so stylised a production) and his voice was not heard at its best. The Rocco of Clive Bayley was very decently sung and the character was invested with an attractive humanity. Though occasionally on the underpowered side, Elizabeth Donovan made a vivacious and sparky Marzelline, a believable comic heroine, painfully finding herself – in Beethoven’s (serious) game with genres – in the wrong sort of opera. Robin Tritschler did well enough in the opening duet with Marzelline. More disappointing was the Don Fernando of Quentin Hayes, unfortunately deficient in any real sense of command or moral authority, either gesturally or vocally.

The work of the orchestra, though it had some rough edges at times, had fire and commitment, and the chorus sang with authority. The conducting of Lothar Koenigs was sometimes a little short on subtlety, but was more successful in communicating the energy and intensity of Beethoven’s music.

This is certainly not a production that will appeal to all. Its theatrical minimalism, its willingness to settle in some scenes for a row of singers standing before the audience almost as if in a concert performance, certainly fails to fully engage with the possibilities of the work. But such a loss is at least partially balanced by the production’s attempt to access the work’d underlying structures, rather than being excessively fascinated by external trappings. The balance hasn’t been achieved, but the attempt is worthwhile. So, an interesting, but limited, approach to a complex work, and a Fidelio no more than adequately sung for the most part. And yet, to return to where I began, it did send me from the theatre newly reconvinced of this opera’s greatness.

Glyn Pursglove