Stream: Fidelio
Royal Opera House on BBC4
The Royal Opera House’s new production of Fidelio was for me the one that got away. Its performances in March were sold out, and I eventually bought a ticket for the cinema broadcast on March 17th – which was cancelled as cinemas shut down. So I was delighted to see the television broadcast. Fidelio is one of my favourites, and this cast with the Royal Opera House orchestra under Antonio Pappano did the music justice. Tobias Kratzer’s direction divided critics but it provides a clear narrative and a respect for Beethoven’s music and ideals. In the excellent introduction to the broadcast Pappano, Kratzer and the singers speak convincingly about Beethoven’s revolutionary zeal, and, interestingly, the difficulty of his music for singers. Apart from the notoriously tricky Act II opening for the tenor, I’d never noticed this, and of course, it doesn’t show in singing of this calibre.
The heroine’s role seems made for Lise Davidsen. She has the voice for the show-stopping arias, and at over six foot, the stage presence to convince in her male impersonation. It was her role debut, but is throughout an assured performance. The high point in Act I is her long aria, in which she moves from raging at the Abscheulicher (monster) Pizzaro, just heard plotting her husband’s death, through quieter memories of the past to tentative expressions of hope – Komm Hoff (come, hope) accompanied by solo horn - and lastly an impassioned confirmation of her love for Florestan. Throughout Davidsen is entirely in control. There are no weak moments either in the singing or the acting. The only fly in the ointment is plot twist at the end of the aria. But more of that later.
Kratzer’s take on the opera depends on creating a believable back-story for the characters, and in this he largely succeeds. The opera’s setting - a prison outside Seville – is relocated to France during the Reign of Terror. The curtain bearing the legend ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’ rises on a realistic prison yard. During the overture Leonora, with other prisoners’ wives, gains admission through the gates. While the others search a grim basket of decapitated heads to find the fate of their husbands, Leonora is hustled out by the guards. By the time she emerges in male attire to seek employment in the prison, she has the act perfectly in place. No-one is likely to push Fidelio about.
The extra narrative also provides a reason for Marzelline’s immediate infatuation. Jaquino, the prison gatekeeper, is her persistent suitor, but is mocked by the other guards - and there’s a suggestion that he’s brutalized by the experience. Marzelline has an unexplained bruise on her face. It only takes a few kind words from the handsome stranger, who meanwhile is speedily convincing her father of his administrative competence, and Marzelline, Rocco and Jacquino believe that a wedding is in the offing.
All of this requires extra dialogue, and introduces extra characters - the loutish guards - into the original. Perhaps unnecessary but it helps to understand the motivation in the early arias by Marzelline and Jacquino, and in the quartet Mir ist so wunderbar. Here the four characters reveal their own thoughts, Marzelline her love for Fidelio, Rocco his new hopes for his daughter’s happiness, Jaquino his despair as he understands that Marzelline doesn’t love him. Only Leonora knows that none of this has any basis in reality, but she cannot risk her husband’s life by saying so. Only in opera perhaps can we comprehend four different soliloquies at the same time. It’s a beautiful piece of music, and this production helps us to understand all its ironies.
The characterization of Rocco – a robust performance by Georg Zeppenfeld – is also helped by the direction. Money – das Geld in his famous aria - almost becomes an obsession, and his fear of Pizarro nearly overcomes his basic decency. His vacillation is clearly and sympathetically portrayed.
Sometimes Kratzer tells us too much. Marzelline’s delighted purchase of a caged bird is heavy-handed symbolism, and we didn’t need to see its unfortunate demise at the hands of Pizzaro to understand that he’s not a very nice man! Likewise Marzelline’s realisation that Fidelio is a woman, placed not at the end of the opera, but at the end of the big Act 1 aria, distracts from this dramatic music. It provides an important turning point for Marzelline though as her love for Fidelio turns into a devotion to Leonora’s cause, giving her an unexpected role in Act II.
Marzelline is ably sung by American soprano Amanda Forsythe. Normally a baroque specialist (some lovely performances on YouTube) she’s entirely convincing both in the music Beethoven gave her, and in the more elaborate characterisation required by this production.
Act I ends with the prisoners’ chorus O Welchen Lust. The ROH chorus are in good voice, and many of them have already been seen in the first act as prison guards and Pizzaro’s soldiers. Rough, desperate and bedraggled, they make their heartfelt plea for freedom while preparing us for our first sight of Florestan in Act II.
It’s not the Florestan that we hoped to see. Jonas Kauffman, after an apology for his voice on the first night, took part in only one more performance and for the rest of the run the role was sung by David Butt Philip. Philip, a former Jette-Parker Young Artist at Covent Garden, was a chorister at Peterborough Cathedral (unusually they had a link with a local state school), and then sang as a baritone in Glyndebourne’s Chorus before changing to tenor roles. His lower register is still strong, and he is more than a match for the rest of the cast. Florestan is that rare operatic hero who appears only in the second act, and his opening aria, after a long orchestral introduction, is noticeably punishing. Philip has a brief wobble on the opening high note. (I’ve not yet heard anyone sing it perfectly in a live performance – though I hear that Kauffman did.) But after that he’s fully in charge, as he recounts how his fight against tyranny has led to his incarceration. He has dreamt, he says, of his angel, Leonora, but when she and Rocco enter, Rocco to dig his grave, she to ensure he is kept alive, he does not recognize her.
This takes place in a setting radically different from the historically accurate Act I. We’re in a museum room with white walls. Florestan in chains lies on a large bare rock and behind him, men and women, in black and white 21st century business suits, are seated on plastic chairs. The set change is emphasized in the broadcast, as as we skip the applause and the interval, and go straight to Pappano raising his baton for Act II. Kratzer believes that the opera falls into two distinct sections. While the first act is realistic, the second is more like a lecture, a philosophical analysis. I think he undersells himself. Act II starts like this, but develops into something more powerful. As the corporate audience watch Florestan -we can see their reactions in close-up on a film projection - they are initially blasé (folded arms, bored expressions), sometimes repelled (the prisoner is filthy) then discomfited by his sincerity and attempts to explain himself (they avoid eye-contact). Gradually one or two stand up, in horror or an attempt to see better. After Rocco and Fidelio enter, they become more engaged, more of them stand and one woman holds out her bottle of water. Pizarro’s arrival sends them scattering in fear to the sides of the room.
In Act I, as we’ve seen, the characters have few private moments. The scene is often busy, and extra people intrude on intimate conversations and reflections. Jaquino and Marzelline are jeered at, Marzelline eavesdrops on her father and Fidelio, and her father and Pizzaro. She watches incredulously as Fidelio becomes Leonora. These on-stage silent watchers seem at first another kind of intrusion. But then we witness their understanding that what has seemed a visual aid – the Revolutionary Prisoner – in an illustrated lecture on tyranny and freedom, is real and present. No longer observers, they are driven to action. Not everyone will like this version of the end of the opera as we lose the reunion of the prisoners and their wives. But I found the rise of the people – (if not the masses, certainly the bourgeoisie!) and their defeat of Pizzaro exhilarating and moving. As is the singing and acting from the four principals. Davidsen and Philips are superb in their duet. Egils Silins as Don Fernando, who emerges from the chorus as they overwhelm Pizzaro’ guard, brings a wonderful bass voice and gravitas to his small role.
This is an unusual but convincing interpretation of the opera. Like some of you reading this, I endured the 2013 Edinburgh Festival space-odyssey Fidelio on segways, and know what it’s like to watch in disbelief this powerful work being undermined by incompetent direction. In contrast, Kratzer respects the opera, gives us food for thought, and importantly gives the singers space to sing and act.
If you haven’t seen the broadcast already, it’s well worth watching at least once and it’s there for another 10 months. David Butt Philips, incidentally, will be singing live in front of real audiences four times in September, as Rodolfo, with Natalya Romaniw as Mimi, in ENO’s drive-in performances of La Boheme at Alexandra Palace on 19th , 23rd, 25th and 27th September.
One singer that we hoped to hear is missing. Jonas Kauffman, who sang the the first performance with an “apology” for having a cold, missed a couple of shows, returned briefly, but was then replaced by David Butt Philip for the rest of the run. The Radio 3 broadcast isn’t available any longer to make comparisons, but if you can’t resist it, there’s a lovely recording from 2012 with Nina Stemme conducted by Claudio Abbado.
