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MusicWeb International |
Mark Berry |
Beethoven: Fidelio, Paris, November/December 2008
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Beethoven, Fidelio
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This was the best Fidelio I have seen in the
theatre. By far the best performance I have heard in the flesh was a concert
performance with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, but
the others, all in the opera house, were all let down by a variety of
factors, not least by, though not restricted to, their conductors. Certain
musicians notwithstanding, ours does not seem to be an age that responds
well to Beethoven. I am, then, delighted to report that this new Paris
production, whilst far from perfect, was much better than reports had led me
to expect.
For one thing – and, when it comes to Beethoven this is a very big thing
indeed – the orchestra was on excellent form. It had weight, so often
lacking nowadays in this music; it had rhythmic security; nor was it without
human tenderness. Sylvain Cambreling, the unofficial house conductor,
presented a controversial version of the score. Opening with the least-known
Leonore overture, no.1, he proceeded to restore an earlier plan, whereby
Beethoven proceeded from aria, to duet, to trio, to quartet, stressing an
underlying original tonality of C major. There seems to be something of a
fashion for tampering with Fidelio at the moment; the Hungarian State Opera
did so earlier this season. I was not ultimately persuaded by Cambreling’s
decisions but at least they had some rationale behind them. And how many
opportunities is one likely to have to hear Leonore I in the theatre? At
least we were spared the dramatic nonsense, again perpetrated in Budapest,
of Leonore III during the second act. (And yes, I am well aware of the
illustrious roll-call of conductors who once followed this practice. Yet
what Mahler or Furtwängler might have been able to get away with is best
disregarded by mere mortals.) Moreover, whilst there were certain tempi
decisions with which I might have disagreed, for instance an excessively
fast, even carefree first act March, Cambreling spared us the indignities of
metronomic ‘authenticity’. There was even the odd occasion when I thought
him a little slow. It was welcome to hear ‘O namenlose Freude!’ as something
other than the typical unmusical rush, but starting at the speed it did, it
should have gathered momentum at some point. As I said above, Colin Davis
remains hors concours from my otherwise disappointing live experience of the
work. Yet Cambreling’s reading was vastly superior to the dullness of
Richard Hickox (English National Opera), to Antonio Pappano (Royal Opera),
less out of his depth than failing even to enter the Beethovenian shallows,
or to the straightforwardly inappropriate veering towards Rossini (!) of
Ádám Fischer (Budapest). The great recorded legacy remains, of course,
another matter entirely.
There was another controversial aspect to the version of Fidelio presented.
Gérard Mortier, in honour of whose sixty-fifth birthday the first
performance of this production was mounted, had decided that the spoken
dialogue was nowadays of dubious theatrical value. Alternative dialogue was
therefore commissioned from Martin Mosebach. I am not at all sure that there
is anything especially wrong with what we usually hear – for one thing, its
familiarity has made it part of our expectation of ‘the work’ – but I was
quite sure that this was no improvement. Some of it was perfectly
acceptable, although even then I could not quite understand why it should be
preferred. However, it made for a considerably longer evening than otherwise
might have been, not least given the typical inability – this goes for every
performance of Fidelio I have attended, bar that in English – of the
non-Germans in the cast to speak the language with credibility. One can
generally hear every word, partly because it is spoken at half-speed. Some
of the new text was also rather peculiar. At the beginning, we hard
Marzelline ponder at some length over what sort of man she would prefer.
Having considered the hairier option, she proceeded to wonder about a man
who was more like a woman. The difficulty of accepting Leonore’s disguise as
Fidelio may detain literal-minded souls, but I am not sure that broaching a
‘bi-curious’ interpretation of Marzelline would have assisted them.
The production was in general convincing. It was not unforgettable, but nor
was it married to an irrelevant concept or concepts. (I think here of Balázs
Kovalik’s production in Budapest, where all sorts of odd ideas did battle
against one other.) The surveillance cameras in a sinister control room
during the first act pointed to a terrifying feature of our own society.
Florestan was always being watched, just as we are. And what went on around?
People attended to their ‘daily lives’ – for such, of course, is the
dramatic material of the first half of the first act – some of them
doubtless quite sure that, in their accustomed Daily Mail-speak, they had
‘nothing to hide’. How many days’ detention without trial would New Labour
have inflicted upon Florestan? Ask Pizarro. Of course, Johan Simons is
unlikely to have had specifically British references in mind, but the point
is increasingly general in Western societies; it is just rather more
advanced in my own. There was a contrasting timelessness to the dungeon
scene. Whilst there is, of course, a place for specific references and we
can hardly fail to think of Guantánamo, it is worth reminding ourselves that
such obscenities can happen at any time, in any place. The willingness of
human beings to torture has been reaffirmed through scientific experiment;
it is part of the role of culture, of works such as Fidelio, to make us rise
above such barbarism.
In the title role, Angela Denoke sometimes struggled vocally. There were
moments when her voice was simply not strong enough, although not so many as
I had expected from other reports. However, she responded readily to the
text – both spoken and sung – and brought her considerable skills as a
singing actress to the role. Whilst this was not a performance I should wish
simply to hear on a recording, I was often gripped by it on stage. Alan Held
oozed malevolence as Don Pizarro, though I thought his hysterical laughter
overdone and strangely camp: more Rocky than Rocco Horror. Kurt Rydl was a
late substitute for Franz-Josef Selig as the jailkeeper. He acted
splendidly: quite an achievement, when he could hardly have had close
acquaintance with the production. However, he exhibited considerable wobble.
I also found it dramatically odd to have so much blacker a voice in this
role than for Pizarro. (Admittedly, that is not a problem confined to this
production.) Julia Kleiter and Ales Briscein were lively and attentive as
Marzelline and Jaquino, whilst Paul Gay impressed as Don Fernando.
But the undoubted star of the show was Jonas Kaufmann. I cannot imagine
that there has ever been a better Florestan. He exhibited a heroism to rival
that of Jon Vickers, albeit without the vocal oddness. Kaufmann displayed an
an astonishing range, not only of dynamics, but also of timbre. The
crescendo upon his first note, delivered head down to the floor, starting
off mezza voce and leading up to a radiant, ringing, yet never crude
fortissimo, was something I suspect I shall never experience again – unless,
of course, it comes from him. He managed to sound utterly credible both as a
starved, tortured prisoner and as a virile incarnation of freedom. Moreover,
his acting was on an equally exalted level, marrying perfectly with the
vocal portrayal. This Fidelio, even had it lacked other virtues, would have
been justified by Jonas Kaufmann alone. |
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