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The Spectator, 7 March 2020 |
Richard Bratby |
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Beethoven: Fidelio, Royal Opera House London, ab 1. März 2020 |
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If your instinct is to undermine Beethoven, you’re directing the wrong opera: Fidelio reviewed
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People may say I can’t sing,’ said the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, ‘but
no one can ever say I didn’t sing.’ There were groans of dismay as an
official walked out before the start of the Royal Opera’s new Fidelio: Jonas
Kaufmann was not feeling on top form, but he was going to perform the role
of Florestan regardless, and begged our indulgence. The mind plays tricks
and after an announcement like that it’s hard to be entirely sure whether
you’re hearing a skilfully proportioned interpretation or a singer dialling
it down. But let the record show that Kaufmann did sing, and if you’ve
booked for this production on the strength of that magic name alone, you can
breathe easy.
And indisposed or not, there’s no mistaking that
endless, unfurling stream of black-and-gold tenor tone. The stupendous
crescendo on Kaufmann’s very first word — ‘Gott!’ — might have been the
single most gripping sound in the whole show. Which is saying something when
a cast includes Lise Davidsen as Leonore: a singer whose top notes are like
staring directly at the sun, and whose unforced personal magnetism makes the
role’s cross-dressing disguise wholly convincing. You could see why
Marzelline (Amanda Forsythe) might have a crush on this strapping,
compassionate young man, and Forsythe’s bright, brave performance was the
centre of a well-characterised ensemble. Georg Zeppenfeld was a believably
troubled Rocco, and Simon Neal’s clenched, black-browed Pizarro sang in
cross-hatched shades of grey.
Antonio Pappano conducted attractively
enough, and throughout Act One we might have been looking at a decent, if
sluggish, revival of a 40-year-old historic staging. Director Tobias Kratzer
sets Act One in revolutionary France, with naturalistic designs and a
walk-on part for a horse. It looks good, and it works well: when Pizarro
quietly invokes the Law of Suspects (Kratzer has adapted the spoken dialogue
to suit his concept), the sense of enveloping, oppressive evil that it
generates more than offsets the mounting number of inconsistencies — mostly
caused by Kratzer’s attempts to rewrite the role of Marzelline in line with
21st-century standards of feistiness (she’s unbuttoning Fidelio’s breeches
in no time).
Then comes Act Two, and Florestan has been sucked into a
parallel dimension: a white abstract space where Kaufmann’s writhing and
emoting is coolly surveyed by massed ranks of people in business suits. He
gesticulates, they recoil. But mostly they just sit there. And just as
you’ve managed to screen them out — the better to focus on one of the most
intensely heartfelt, genuinely dramatic scenes that Beethoven ever created —
Kratzer starts projecting their faces, ten-foot high, on the back wall of
the set. In the foreground, Zeppenfeld, Davidsen and Kaufmann are exploring
the outer reaches of hope and despair. But you’re just trying to pull your
eyes away from some chin-stroking random. Love? Courage? Brotherhood? Oh
wow, that bloke’s having a swig of Evian.
Yes, it’s our old pal the
Alienation Effect and by the time Marzelline rocks up with a pistol,
spouting chunks of Grillparzer’s funeral oration for Beethoven, I certainly
felt alienated. Kratzer explains his thinking in the programme: this isn’t
one opera at all, but a ‘melodrama on freedom and love in the
post-Revolutionary era’ followed by (seriously) ‘a political essay on the
responsibility of the individual in the face of a silent majority’.
Beethoven, for what it’s worth, said Fidelio was about married love. No
reason why it can’t be all these things, of course, but it needs to cohere
on some level and if, faced with Beethoven’s blazing final affirmation, your
instinct is to undermine him, you should probably be directing a different
opera. This Fidelio contains some interesting ideas and a couple of
borderline-great performances. They’re not enough.
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