Ludwig van BEETHOVEN(1770-1827)
Fidelio, Op 72, Opera in two acts
Leonore/Fidelio – Lise Davidsen (soprano)
Florestan – David Butt Philip (tenor)
Jaquino – Robin Tritschler (tenor)
Marzelline – Amanda Forsythe (soprano)
Rocco – Georg Zeppenfeld (bass)
Don Pizarro – Simon Neal (baritone)
First Prisoner – Filipe Manu (tenor)
Second Prisoner – Timothy Dawkins (bass)
Don Fernando – Egils Siliņš (baritone)
Chorus & Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/Sir Antonio Pappano
Tobias Kratzer (stage director)
Anja Kühnhold and Julia Burbach (assistant directors)
Rainer Sellmaier (designer)
Michael Braun (lighting designer)
Bettina Bartz (dramaturge)
Rhodri Huw (film direction)
rec. live, 13 March 2020 at Covent Garden, London, UK.
Extra features: Why the Royal Opera love performing Fidelio; Cast Gallery
Audio formats: LPCM 2.0 24 bit stereo and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese, Korean.
OPUS ARTE OABD7288D Blu-ray [138 mins]
This Covent Garden production marked the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Sadly, the pandemic closed it prematurely. This filmed performance is the showing on 13 March 2020. The company hired a German production team and a top star cast, with Lise Davidsen and Jonas Kaufman in the leading parts. The indisposed Kaufman was replaced for that evening by David Butt Philip.
The words Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité are emblazoned on the dress curtain. The opening bars of the glorious overture and the lifting curtains reveal a prison courtyard in 18th century France. The scene is after the Revolution, with the tricolour hanging, rather than in Spain from Bouilly’s original play, which Beethoven was forced to change. We see people looking out onto the square where executions are taking place. Leonore is among those at the gates, straining to discover the fate of her husband. Quickly the picture becomes macabre: repository is brought in from which decapitated heads drop onto the floor.
Act One opens with a quarrel between Marzelline and her suitor Jaquin. It results in her carrying the facial bruises. Amanda Forsythe’s Marzelline is a fine and light soprano. She shows outstanding qualities as a fine actress. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Rocco is finely sung and characterised, and counts among the successes of the performance. Simon Neal’s Don Pizzaro enters on a fine black horse to great pageantry, and is received with both fear and wariness by the prison guards. The entry of the prisoners on stage is enacted well enough but the singing does not rise to the beauty and wonderment that one expects from this passage, O welche Lust!
One of the features of this production is the use of texts by several writers, including Georg Buchner. In one episode, this becomes somewhat ludicrous when Don Pizzaro calls on loyalty to the king after Louis XVI has evidently long since lost his head in the swath of executions in the Revolution. There are other curious aspects in the dialogues from the first act. After Marzelline has sung O wär ich schon mit dir vereint, she attempts to undo Fidelio’s trousers before bashfully moving away in shame.
Act Two has the opening scene of a drawing room with a group of well-dressed actors seated in a semi-circle around the bound prisoner Florestan. The people are attired in modern clothes. As he awakens, they look on his plight with mixed concern and indifference, while he sings his aria Gott! Welch’ Dunkel hier! This is stage director Tobias Kratzer’s fine tactic to show public attitudes to the dilemma of the imprisoned Florestan, and perhaps to inhumanity in general. In scene two, this response from the people is heightened when the actors’ faces are projected onto the back cloth while Rocco and Fidelio assist Florestan. During the aria Nur hurtig fort, nur frisch gegraben, the indifference of the encircled audience is accentuated by their dispassionate laughing and drinking. Yet when Don Pizzaro enters with guards – Er Sterbe! Doch ich soll erst wissen – and draws his dagger, the indifference changes to revolt. They disarm and kill the guards. The revolt allows Florestan to be freed. Fidelio is reunited with her husband as Don Fernando arrives to general acclaim.
All in all, the singing is excellent, and the characterizations are generally suitable. Perhaps the finest acting is that of Amanda Forsythe as Marzelline and Georg Zeppenfeld as Rocco, both in voice and stage presence. Lise Davidsen’s vocal attributes are outstanding, yet her movements are a little impassive, as if she is still strangely getting into her part. David Butt Philip’s Florestan is superb in voice, but in the glorious arioso O namenlose Freude! he finds it oddly difficult to look into his beloved’s eyes, and seems disengaged from his role. In one way, the characterisation of the heroine in Leonore/Fidelio is true to the letter of Beethoven’s intention: she is the dedicated free woman who has pledged to save her husband. The liberator Don Fernando sung by Egils Siliņš is excellently portrayed, and offers a memorable closing highlight to this great opera, enhanced by the moving chorus Heil sei dem Tag! In addition to the revolutionary vows of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity, key to this opera are the liberating roles of women, epitomised by Marzelline and above all by Leonore/Fidelio. The orchestra is excellent, with especially fine woodwind solos. Pappano’s conducting is, as usual, energetic and powerful.
This challenging production of one of the greatest operas is well worth exploring.
Gregor Tassie
Libretto details
Joseph Sonnleithner (1766-1835), Stephan von Breuning (1776-1827) and Georg Friedrich Treitschke (1776-1842) after the libretto Léonore, ou l’amour conjugal by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly (1763-1842). Dialogue based on the original libretto by Tobias Kratzer with additional texts by Georg Buchner and Franz Grillparzer.
