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The Times, March 02 2020 |
Richard Morrison |
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Beethoven: Fidelio, Royal Opera House London, ab 1. März 2020 |
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Fidelio review — a staging that irritates as well as challenges
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To describe Tobias Kratzer’s provocative new Royal Opera production of
Fidelio without giving away its surprises is impossible. So I suggest that
those who like surprises don’t read this, but those who like explanations
do.
Kratzer believes that Beethoven wrote not one opera but two. Act
I, Kratzer claims, is a historical melodrama alluding to the bloody
aftermath of the French Revolution (the ostensible Spanish setting, he says,
was just a ruse to bypass the censors). Act II, however, is a timeless
“political essay” challenging individuals of all eras to stand up to
tyranny.
That’s exactly how the director stages it. The overture
(with a grisly mime featuring freshly guillotined heads) and first act are
presented impeccably in period style. A 1790s prison yard opens up
ingeniously in Rainer Sellmaier’s design to disclose the domestic rooms
where Amanda Forsythe’s Marzelline explicitly attempts to seduce Lise
Davidsen’s strikingly tall, handsome Leonore, only to discover too much
about the “man” she adores.
Thus, Marzelline becomes complicit in
Leonore’s rescue of her husband, Florestan. You need to remember that later
because it explains why it’s Marzelline who blasts out the famous trumpet
call that saves Leonore and Florestan and shoots the evil Pizarro.
Before that, however, Kratzer has delivered his boldest shock. The curtain
rises after the interval to reveal history swept away, and a modern-day
audience gawping at Jonas Kaufmann’s chained Florestan writhing on a rock.
What’s more, the faces of those spectators, projected in huge close-ups,
increasingly upstage the “real” action.
At first they are only mildly
engaged (one woman nibbles chocolate while watching), but the trumpet call
rouses them, and they storm the stage to protect Leonore and Florestan.
Kratzer’s message is clearly that each new generation must fight its own
battle to preserve freedom.
Whether that’s also Beethoven’s message
is debatable, and Kratzer doesn’t help his cause by mashing scenes together
and interpolating texts from other dramatists to endorse his concept. So
it’s a staging that irritates as well as challenges.
And the show’s
musical values are similarly mixed. There’s utterly majestic singing from
Davidsen and emotional intensity from an under-the-weather Kaufmann, but
other voices are surprisingly nondescript. In the pit, however, Antonio
Pappano conducts a fiery reading of the score, full of audacious tempos and
rasping textures, that is as radical as Kratzer’s staging.
You never
see a perfect Fidelio; it’s too problematic. At least this staging makes you
think deeply, in Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year, about the composer’s
visionary intentions.
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