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OPERA NEWS, April 2000 |
STEPHEN HASTINGS |
Fidelio
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Beethoven: Fidelio, La Scala, Dezember
1999 |
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Riccardo Muti has made something of a specialty
of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century operas; he has recently
performed cycles of Beethoven symphonies with the La Scala orchestra. So
Fidelio was a natural choice to open the company's new season -- quite apart
from the symbolic import of presenting it at the beginning of a new
millennium. The performance seen on December 18 was to be appreciated above
all for its stylistic uniformity. Seldom has the homely singspiel atmosphere
of the opening scenes seemed so neatly wedded to the music drama that
evolves out of it. Dialogue was kept to a minimum (there are no surtitles at
La Scala), tempos were generally swift, and the music unravelled with
well-oiled precision and carefully balanced sonorities (if one excepts the
brassy overlay in the concluding section of the interpolated Leonore III
Overture). It was not, however, a particularly involving or morally
uplifting performance -- at least not until the final scene, where Stephen
Millings proved a noble, imposing Fernando and Muti provided an
appropriately sublime accompaniment to Leonore's "O Gott, welch'ein
Augenblick." In Act I, the conductor had left the singers little room to
project words colorfully, and his quest for ethereal sonorities in the
quartet and at the beginning of "O welche Lust" (proficiently performed by
the Scala chorus) proved more contrived than expressive.
Eva Lind as Marzelline and Jonas Kaufmann as Jaquino sang with somewhat
bland accuracy, and Kurt Rydl's potentially ideal Rocco, though
enjoyable, suffered from a lack of give-and-take with the conductor and the
other singers. The promising lyric soprano Elizabeth Whitehouse sounded
overwhelmed by the demands of Leonore. Although moments of strain on top and
inaudibility lower down are common in this role, her identification with the
character seemed insufficient to justify the vocal risks and compromises
involved. Jan Vicick also has a relatively lightweight instrument, yet it
was refreshing to hear such a youthful tenor as Florestan, and his phrasing
in the dungeon scene gave genuine pleasure. The same cannot be said of the
Pizarro of Franz-Josef Kapellmann, whose expressive intentions were
undermined by crude voice production and dubious intonation.
None of the singers had been helped much by Werner Herzog's direction, which
proved particularly insipid in the opening scene and spoiled the beginning
of Act II by fussily bringing Florestan onstage by means of a manually
operated elevator, as if Beethoven's orchestral introduction -- beautifully
played by the Scala orchestra -- were not expressively self-sufficient.
Franca Squarciapino's costumes seemed to set the action in the Napoleonic
era, while Ezio Frigerio's massive set construction looked more neutral in
temporal reference, allowing for a powerful evocation of the castle parade
ground in Act I but often seeming out of proportion with the humanistic
spirit of the music. |
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