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The Telegraph, 1 MARCH 2020 |
Rupert Christiansen |
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Beethoven: Fidelio, Royal Opera House London, ab 1. März 2020 |
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Fidelio, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, review
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After ducking out of the dress rehearsal earlier this week, a rumour
circulated Covent Garden that Jonas Kaufmann was sickening and might cancel
the first performance of this new production of Fidelio. In the event, the
superstar tenor came on, “craving our indulgence”, and his singing as
Florestan just about met expectations. But the bigger sensation was the
astonishing young Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen in the title role: she
simply blew the audience away.
That the performance otherwise was a
disappointment comes as no surprise to me. Fidelio may be a transcendently
moving work by the greatest of composers, but it’s not easy to pull off on
stage (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a completely satisfying interpretation).
Beethoven had a magnificent sense of drama but little grasp of effective
theatre, and there’s something broken-backed about an opera that starts as a
quasi-realistic domestic comedy before passing through political melodrama
into a symbolic journey from darkness to light and ending up in the
visionary realms of the finale to the 9th Symphony and the Missa Solemnis.
These inherent dramaturgical problems make Fidelio catnip to the new
school of Middle European opera directors, among whom Tobias Kratzer
currently ranks high. His version of the libretto liberally changes the
actions of the characters and adds new dialogue alongside extracts from
plays on revolutionary themes by Büchner and Grillparzer. This is done in
the name of “critical interrogation of the text”, but I found almost all of
what he has contributed merely banal and self-regarding.
The first
act starts off promisingly enough, with a realistic depiction of a grim
prison courtyard and people in clothes of the late-18th century. A period
production, hurrah! But an unintentionally ludicrous dumb show during the
overture in which the wives of the incarcerated are handed their husbands’
decapitated heads sounded the alarm. Soon Jaquino is being beaten up by
louts, Marzelline is attempting to unbutton Fidelio’s flies and uncover
his/her secret, and Leonore’s pistol is confiscated after she is frisked
before entering the dungeon. And that’s just the first act.
What
follows is much worse. Florestan is chained to a rock, surrounded by a
gawping audience in modern dress, representing us the public as voyeurs
guiltily complicit in his suffering. Their fatuous expressions of disgust,
dismay and indifference are projected on to a screen behind the singers,
constituting nothing but a distraction. It isn’t Leonore who brings Pizarro
to justice but Marzelline, whose shoots him and sets off a riot. I could go
on, but am reluctant to pay Kratzer’s sophomoric fancies and “insights” more
attention. His is not serious interpretation, it’s plain showing off.
Antonio Pappano conducts a vigorous and exciting if sometimes
superficial reading of the score, and the chorus sounds thrilling in the
final scene, but the Royal Opera’s casting department has made some bad
calls in assigning the supporting roles. Simon Neal’s underpowered Pizarro
lacks jackboot swagger and Georg Zeppenfeld’s Rocco is also insipid. Amanda
Forsythe and Robin Tritschler would make an attractive Marzelline and
Jaquino in a smaller house: in Covent Garden, they were pallid.
No
complaints about the two principals, however. Jonas Kaufmann sings with
eloquent nobility and should sound even more confident when restored to full
health. Lise Davidsen’s Leonore is nothing short of sublime: I’ve never
heard her first-act aria sung with such precision and clarity, such warmth
and majesty, and she acts with ardour and moves with grace, making her
transvestite disguise unusually plausible. The voice glows and shines: a
God-given instrument, used with sensitive artistry. To hear it alone is
worth the price of any ticket.
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