As my Presto colleagues would wryly confirm, I've been avidly
awaiting this new Fidelio from last year’s Lucerne Festival for
several weeks, greeting each morning’s post with an eager ‘Is it
here yet...?’. Stumbling upon the Radio 3 broadcast of the live
performance last summer, I was absolutely spellbound by the
immaculate pacing, clarity and drama of what I heard and spent
the next week zealously urging every opera-lover I knew to catch
it on BBC’s listen again device – iplayer – so I was thrilled
when Decca confirmed that it was to be released commercially.
From the opening flourishes of the overture, Abbado and his
hand-picked festival orchestra arrest the attention: despite the
relatively brisk tempo, countless little details emerge which
are glossed over on rival recordings, and the energy and care
for countermelodies are carried over into the ensuing duet
between the sparring Marzelline and Jaquino. The dialogue –
often a stumbling-point on recordings – is delivered with
absolute conviction and a total absence of staginess, and never
feels like an unwelcome interruption.
It’s no backhanded
compliment to say that Nina Stemme is almost more compelling in
the spoken sections than when singing: she sounds convincingly
masculine when playing ‘Fidelio’ with Rocco and his daughter
(small wonder that Rachel Harnisch’s bright-toned Marzelline
fell for this sultry-voiced young ‘jailer's assistant’!), and
her barely-suppressed joy and anguish on discovering the
identity of the high-security prisoner in the dungeon-scene are
almost unbearably moving. Occasionally, a hint of shrillness
creeps into the very upper reaches (a couple of moments in
‘Abscheulicher!’ might have warranted a re-take on a studio
recording) but the voice is so lustrous and every phrase is so
invested with character that it hardly matters.
Falk
Struckmann, a celebrated Wagnerian baddie, avoids the
one-dimensional barking of many Pizarros: there’s a terrible
beauty to his big ‘vengeance’ aria (the chorus sound tangibly
seduced by his presence in their interjections) and a
charismatic authority in his dealings with Christof Fischesser’s
Rocco, who veers between gruff sympathy for his prisoners and
audible fear of the Powers That Be.
The ensemble-singing
has the balance and synthesis which characterise the very best
performances of Beethoven’s chamber-music, yet this Fidelio is
dominated by the last character we meet, sung here by the
mesmerising Jonas Kaufmann. His first note alone is worth the
price of the set: his entry is virtually imperceptible, but the
prisoner’s soft moan of ‘Gott!’ builds to a searing cry of
anguish which had my hair standing on end (and, no doubt, my
neighbours poised to bang on the wall!). Despite the innate
virility and power of the voice, he conveys the starving
prisoner’s physical weakness as well as his nobility and
strength of mind – and at the end of a gruelling evening still
fields clarion tone in the brief solos praising his ‘holdes
Weib’ in the final scene.
The comparatively dark voices
of the two protagonists won’t perhaps be to all tastes but, for
me, are one of the selling-points of this recording – it goes
without saying that both are in almost total technical command
of these fiercely demanding roles, but there’s a palpable sense
of effort which only reinforces the heroism of the characters.
One tiny caveat: all applause (including a loud ‘Bravo!’ and
noisy storm of shushing after Florestan’s aria!) has been edited
out since the broadcast, which seems oddly anticlimactic after
the blazing C major jubilation of the very end! It says much
that this is my only reservation: this is truly glorious,
exhilarating music-making, and a superb document of one of the
most thrilling live performances of 2010.
