home | art & architecture | books & cds | dance | destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
 Scene from Fidelio, La Scala |
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
If Fidelio is not the finest argument that
opera transcends the sum of its parts, what is? The story has a ridiculous premise: a
woman, whose husband has been unjustly kidnapped by a prison commandant, disguises herself
as a boy and takes a job assisting the jailer. Despite her shape and penetrating soprano,
she fools everybody. The jailer even picks her for a son-in-law – on the very day the
wicked commandant wants them to murder the secret prisoner being held incommunicado.
Mozart is often admired for the way he
uses vocal means to suggest class differences in his operas, contrasting an Italianate
technical proficiency of aristocrats and demigods with simple danceable tunes for barbers
and birdcatchers. In Fidelio, Beethoven, who is seldom praised for his dramatic
skill at all, goes a step further in the same line. In the foreground of the story are
“archetypal” characters: Florestan, the indomitable prisoner; Leonore (disguised
as “Fidelio”), who dares all for love; and Don Pizarro, the oppressor. They are
set among mere human beings, whose music reflects their ordinariness: Rocco, the jailer
who sings of thrift to young lovers; his daughter, Marzelline, who ignores the grim prison
to dream of romance; Jacquino, the guard in pursuit of Marzelline (who prefers pretty
Fidelio). The ordinariness of the story in the foreground – boy loves girl who loves
someone else – is in stark contrast with its grim prison setting. We almost forget
what the opera is really about, lulled by the landler rhythm of Rocco’s song
or Marzelline’s bourgeois hopes.
Then Pizarro enters, determined to kill his secret prisoner – and,
abruptly, we are in the realm of the demonic. A rage out of all proportion to the
situation boils through the aria, as if Pizarro’s human form concealed Satanic
malice. He tries to bribe greedy Rocco to commit the deed, but Rocco can’t be pushed
quite so far. The hesitations in his vocal line tell us something about Rocco that he,
perhaps, does not know: his soul is still his own. He agrees merely to dig the
prisoner’s grave, comforting himself with the white lie that the hopeless fellow will
be better off out of his misery.
Beethoven provides two glorious responses to Pizarro’s demonic
evil: first, Leonore-Fidelio’s aria, “Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin?”, in
which she reveals her true self to us in music almost too awkward to bring off with both
excitement and beauty. (Beethoven was a clumsy writer for the voice, especially at the top
of the soprano or tenor range – ask anyone who’s sung in the chorus of his Ninth
Symphony.) After declaring herself willing to die for conjugal love – a sentiment
only a lifelong bachelor like Beethoven could have proclaimed so ecstatically –
Leonore opens the gates of the cells to allow the prisoners to walk in the fresh air for a
time. They respond with a hymn to freedom in Beethoven’s most elemental sublime. If
we are out of sympathy with the soprano after her hectic singing, the chorus states the
composer’s case: The story is a matter of humanity vs. tyranny.
In Act II, we find Florestan depicted, by both orchestra and vocal
line, in the darkness of despair, though he has a vision of an angelic Leonore coming to
rescue him. The two jailers, Rocco and Fidelio, enter to dig the grave, and Pizarro
attempts murder – only to be thwarted by Fidelio-Leonore, who reveals herself at
last, and by a trumpet call signaling the arrival of the royal Minister. In terms of
dramaturgy, there seems little to prevent Pizarro from a quick messy murder or two, even
at this late juncture, but the trumpet call has become a character, a voice from another
world, and once it sounds, evil is frustrated and Florestan saved. We are operating on
levels far beyond realism here.
And what of Rocco, who is still present and has seen his boss revealed
at his most monstrous, and his son-in-law turn out to be a woman? When Jacquino says the
rescuing Minister has arrived, Rocco cries out that he has come
“augenblicklich”, that is, in the nick of time. This is dialogue, not sung, and
could be spoken in several ways – but most Roccos emphasize the word, and most
Pizarros flinch at it. Rocco has seen the three superhuman figures as they really are. He
now commits himself to freedom and heroism, renouncing his complicity with tyranny. In the
final scene, it is he who bursts in to tell the Minister of the heroic deed he has
witnessed.
Rocco has become Everyman, a representation of us. Like most of
us, he has been minding his own business, ignoring the moral implications of existence in
the struggle to survive. He has doubtless done many morally a dubious thing to earn a
materially better life for his family. But when a real drama explodes into being before
his eyes, he refuses to take the final step into villainy, and allows himself to be
awakened to appreciation of a greater moral good. He is our best self, ourselves as we
wish to be when we face the choice between our conscience and other considerations. If he
were not present in the opera, enduring and risking with the impure heart that most of us
possess, we would not feel the grandeur of the others to such a degree, even with
Beethoven in their corner.
There is really no need to make a staging of Fidelio too topical
– Beethoven has already made it universal, and any era familiar with unjust
imprisonment responds to it instantly. The Metropolitan Opera’s 1970 Otto
Schenk-Boris Aronson production of Fidelio, with its dank prison yard and
drawbridge, abruptly filled with light at the ecstatic conclusion, was ideal in its way,
but thirty years is a long time for an opera production.
In October, the Met presented a Fidelio by Jürgen Flimm, with
sets by Robert Israel, lighting by Duane Schuler, and costumes by Florence von Gerkan. The
new staging is vaguely contemporary, the prisoners in white pajamas, the guards in modern
uniforms, Pizarro, Rocco and Don Fernando in suits and ties, the women (Marzelline and the
chorus in the final scene) in drab flowered dresses that recall the ’30s, or perhaps
Iron Curtain countries. Karita Mattila, the tall, glamorous, golden-haired prima donna,
has cut and dyed her hair and makes a very convincing round-faced adolescent boy. (Will
stouter sopranos be able to live up to this?)
The opera is performed as a gesamtkunstwerk;
that is, with very few pauses for applause except at the ends of scenes. As there is no
need of a long pause to change the set in Act II – the curtain wall of
Florestan’s dungeon simply rises to reveal an ethereal cloudscape for the joyous
finale – there is no point in playing the Leonore #3 overture at this point,
as has been a custom since the time of Wagner and Mahler. Though a highlight, albeit an
intrusive one, of Met performances under Karl Böhm and Klaus Tennstedt, it is therefore
omitted in the new production.
Flimm’s direction has
been as precise as his cast of extraordinary actors deserves. He has given them all
recognizable persons to inhabit, and they live up to these figures: Rocco as fussy
bureaucrat, Pizarro seething with suppressed hostility, Fidelio as a clumsy but thoughtful
boy-chick. Flimm has handled especially well the difficulties of the Dungeon Scene, where
Leonore gives Florestan some bread and recognizes him, though he (after two years in the
dark) does not know her. Flimm has her raise a trap door between them, and there is a
moment when Florestan grasps it in despair and Leonore, on the other side, visibly longs
to console that hand by a touch or a kiss, and dares not do so, that is as eloquent, as
wrenching, as any moment in the score.
Some of Flimm’s other choices
are not so deft. The freeing of the prisoners is clumsy, the gloom of the dungeon (on
which Florestan comments at length) has far too many bright lights, and the martial arts
skill with which Leonore and Florestan disarm the tyrant is so skillful that we wonder why
they were ever afraid of him. Perhaps that is Flimm’s point, but it is not Beethoven:
if Pizarro is not truly a threat, those who defy him are less heroic.
The final scene, a static paean to victory, is a challenge to any
director (Schenk brought it off, though). Flimm, whose blue backdrop has really made all
the necessary points, clearly does not know when to stop: Marzelline (rejoicing with the
rest, according to the words and the music) turns into Ophelia, going mad and strewing
flowers. Pizarro’s equestrian statue is toppled, and he is strung up on the carcass.
Leonore cuts Florestan’s bonds with a knife instead of unlocking his chains. We seem
to see not just liberation here but the birth of a new and unstoppable reign of
bloodthirst.
The singing was almost as good as it promised to be on paper. Mattila
is abandoning such lyric roles as Fiordiligi and Donna Elvira, which is a shame, but as
her Elsa in Lohengrin demonstrated two years ago, she is maturing into a major
light dramatic soprano. (There are rumors of Salome in the offing. When did you
last want to see a Salome’s body?) Her acting is superb, but the voice seemed
a bit covered, not quite certain during the quartet and the aria of Act I. She has always
been admirably cautious in choosing roles, and one hopes that the awkwardness of
Beethoven’s vocal lines, which did not throw her but certainly bucked like a horse
half-tamed, will do no lasting damage to the finest young dramatic soprano now before the
public.
Ben Heppner gave a most affecting
performance, but his voice is associated with more lyric sounds than this music tore out
of him – at times he sounded a little like Jon Vickers in this role, which argues
that Vickers only began to sound that way when Beethoven began to shred him. Rene Pape
had fun acting the fussy clerk, but his lovely bass blended with particular beauty in all
the little moments where he sang with Mattila. It was a performance to see, but the
musical rewards often took one to another place entirely.
Falk Struckmann gave a spectacular
acted performance of Pizarro, but his singing sounded a discordant note –
indeed, nothing but discordant notes, harsh, hollow and toneless. It is difficult to
conceive of a singer giving Pizarro the satanic authority the role calls for, but singing
it in tune would help. Jennifer Welch-Babidge sang Marzelline with a fruity Germanic
vibrato that was most pleasing in this music – perhaps a little breathless in her
aria, where Maestro Levine seemed to be rushing her – and Matthew Polenzani was the
able Jaquino.
That tendency to rush, to keep the
performance in under three hours, was the only objection to Levine’s conducting,
which often reminded us of the Mozartean content of the little asides of the domestic
drama in Act I, and hit the anguish nail precisely on the head in the devastating opening
of Act II. The chorus was not overwhelming, did not sound needy in Act I, or
sufficiently together at the finale, but this may be new production jitters. This Fidelio
should be with us for a long time, and they’ll become more precise.
Metropolitan Opera, New York, October 25, 2000 - John Yohalem
