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Justice for Beethoven

Opera Company's "Fidelio' (2nd review)

In
4 minute read
Perez (left) with Brian Anderson: Why don't schoolkids know these tunes?
Perez (left) with Brian Anderson: Why don't schoolkids know these tunes?
Fidelio is Beethoven’s Ninth with a story line. Both are odes to freedom and love, with triumphant music sung by chorus and vocal soloists. Odd, then, that the opera never gained the great popularity of the symphony.

Schoolkids know the tunes from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but I heard patrons at the Opera Company of Philadelphia say they never knew that he wrote an opera. Fidelio was last performed in Philadelphia 19 years ago.

Why is this? It’s not that Fidelio’s melodies or rhythms are less attractive. They spring from the same mold as the symphony, with pulsating energy. And this production does the piece proud.

Christine Goerke is a first-class Léonore, who disguises herself as a male and gets a job as a prison guard to search for her husband, then bravely rescues him. Her voice is heroic, which suits the character perfectly. She soars effortlessly at the top of the part’s range and drops smoothly into a baritonal sound in the lower range. Goerke isn’t daunted by Beethoven’s fancy coloratura flourishes, which 1805 critics called "unsingable."

Florestan, Léonore’s husband, is well sung by Anthony Dean Griffey. He stresses the part’s idealistic qualities, giving us beautiful soft singing. He works with a handicap: His character doesn’t appear at all in the first act, then sings an aria in a dark cell that fades quietly away without an applause-cue ending, and, after that, he doesn’t get any solo passages.

Overlook the weight issue

Goerke and Griffey make a well-matched couple, both about the same age and physique. Some viewers might find Griffey too stout to portray a starving prisoner and Goerke too hefty to pass for a young man. But when two stars sing this beautifully and act reasonably well, weight shouldn’t disqualify them. The best singers in these roles– Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson, Jon Vickers, Jessye Norman, Ben Heppner– were far from slender.

Philadelphian Ailyn Perez was an adorable Marzelline, the prison warden’s daughter. Stephen Morscheck stepped in with one rehearsal to replace the indisposed Julian Rodescu as Rocco, the warden. He looked and moved so well, and his baritone voice was so solid, that I can’t imagine anyone else performing the role better. Greer Grimsley was a tyrannical Pizzaro. His dark visage matched the coal-black sound of his voice and his acting was appropriately terrifying.

A wise omission


Conductor Corrado Rovaris maintained a steady pace, and the orchestra played exceedingly well, especially the horns and woodwinds. Rovaris chose to omit the customary insertion of an extra overture in the middle of the last act– the so-called “Léonore No. Three.” A wise choice, because it delays the story’s dramatic resolution.

The sets and costumes were designed by the Japanese artist/sculptor Jun Kaneko, whose timeless concept is more attractive than the Met’s modern staging. A grid that suggests barbed wire is projected on a front scrim as well as on the scenery. Lines and blocks of various colors dart across the grid, reminding me of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in Disney’s Fantasia, but without the close coordination between music and animation that Stokowski and Disney achieved. Through most of the opera, about 60% of the grid was white and 40% black, suggesting a struggle between good and evil.

A most effective moment occurred when the back wall rose to reveal three tiers of prisoners in their cells, for Beethoven’s moving “Prisoners’ Chorus,” as they sing: "We will be free." Florestan’s aria, "Gott! Welch Dunkel hier," was sung in a very dark cell behind the jail-like grid, and the cell was flooded with blinding light when Léonore rescued him.

A few flaws

Kaneko’s costume designs were idiosyncratic. For example, Marzelline wore a black and white polka-dot dress with one black sleeve and one blue, and one stocking white and one black. In sum, the production is impressive but not always backed up by understandable detail. Robert B. Driver directed sensibly.

Fidelio is not a perfect opera, as Beethoven himself was well aware: He spent nine years revising it. For example, it starts as a conventional sing-spiele, with comic bantering between amiable stereotypes. This German equivalent of vaudeville undermines the serious drama that’s to follow– but this scene also includes a gorgeous quartet in canon form. Only then comes the heart of the story: the adventure of a loving wife hoping to rescue her husband from a tyrant.

The second flaw lies in the opera’s failure to end with the dramatic rescue. Instead, Fidelio continues for another ten minutes, dissipating the tension. But that time is occupied by a chorus that rivals the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As Driver observed in his program notes, the finale is an oratorio. It doesn’t fit by theater standards, but it’s gloriously uplifting.


To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.


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