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Bloomberg News, 4 December
2008 |
Jorg von Uthmann |
Beethoven: Fidelio, Paris, November/December 2008
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‘Fidelio’ Gets New Text, Hi-Tech Gadgets, Odd Overture in Paris
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Beethoven’s only opera, is often staged to
celebrate an extraordinary event -- such as the resurrection of the
bombed-out Vienna State Opera after the war.
The new production at the Opera National de Paris -- the first in 26 years
-- opened with a gala celebrating the 65th birthday of Gerard Mortier, the
outgoing director of the house. That the opera is set in Spain, Mortier’s
future workplace (he will be director of Madrid’s Teatro Real), is a happy
coincidence.
The evening begins with a surprise. Instead of the traditional overture,
Sylvain Cambreling conducts Leonore I, a less effective earlier version.
Leonore III, the most dramatic of the four overtures, usually played before
the final scene, is dropped altogether.
The excision of the two most popular overtures is not the only surprise. By
common consent, the spoken dialogues are the opera’s Achilles heel. Most
directors cut as much as possible, leaving just a few bridges between the
musical islands.
Not in Paris. Mortier invited the German writer Martin Mosebach to bring the
awkward text up to date. After some hesitation, Mosebach came up with plenty
of new ideas.
You hear Rocco, the jailer, complain about the hardships of his job.
Marzelline, his daughter, muses on Fidelio’s smooth skin. Jacquino, her
luckless suitor, professes his conviction that what counts in marriage is
the father’s consent, not the daughter’s feelings: “Marriage is a business!”
he cries.
Murderous Minister?
Mosebach’s most radical innovation is to present Pizarro, the heavy, as a
henchman of the Minister who, he suggests, would have preferred to find no
trace of Florestan in the prison instead of freeing him. In the “Suddeutsche
Zeitung,” a German daily newspaper, Mosebach justified his heretical view
with the career of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, on whose play the opera is based:
After the French Revolution, Bouilly apparently condemned several opponents
of the new regime to death.
Director Johan Simons, on the other hand, has remained faithful to
Beethoven’s intentions. His last production at the Paris Opera, “Simone
Boccanegra,” angered quite a few people by transferring the story to Ukraine
and its Orange Revolution.
This time Simons and his set designer Jan Versweyveld have simply modernized
the prison, stuffing it with monitors, computers and other hi-tech gadgets.
That a modern-day Pizarro would hardly try to kill his enemy with a dagger
doesn’t seem to bother them.
Angela Denoke in the title role is svelte enough to pass muster as a man.
Yet her voice is too small: When the going gets tough, it spreads and her
intonation suffers.
Heroic Feats
The hero of the evening is Jonas Kaufmann. He masters Florestan’s lyrical
passages and ecstatic outbursts with equal ease. Through almost the entire
Act II, he sings lying flat on his face -- no mean feat but perhaps a bit
over the top, even for a dying man.
Franz-Josef Selig is a warm Rocco, Julia Kleiter a somewhat colorless
Marzelline. Alan Held’s Pizarro and Ales Briscein’s Jacquino, both
non-Germans, struggle with the unfamiliar text.
What does the updating do for the opera’s emotional impact? Not much. In the
famous Vienna production of “Fidelio,” conducted by Leonard Bernstein, my
companion burst into tears after Florestan’s liberation. She was not alone.
In Paris, the eyes stay dry. |
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