United States The Met: Live in HD – Beethoven, Fidelio: Soloists, Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Susanna Mälkki (conductor). Broadcast live (directed by Gary Halvorson) from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, to Cineworld Basildon, Essex, 15.3.2025. (JPr)
Globally, I believe, on 28 February 2025 there was a rare seven-planet alignment, a ‘planetary parade’, visible in the night sky, on 4 March 2025 at the Metropolitan Opera seven stars first aligned (review here), this time operatic ones, for a revival of Jürgen Flimm’s 2000 production of Fidelio.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, introduced the broadcast explaining how Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio ‘is about individual resistance and heroism in the face of tyranny, [and] dealt an artistic blow to Napoleon’s ambitions to be the dictator of Europe. That’s why Fidelio is such an important opera to be performed today when the free world is under the gravest threat since World War II … Great arts like Fidelio is a pillar of a free and just society. The Metropolitan Opera, in our own fight for a civilised world, will always remain committed to its values of freedom from oppression’. Gelb’s own ‘personal heroine’ is his wife, the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who as founder of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra is currently on a further visit to Ukraine ‘to perform for the liberty of that heroic and embattled nation’. Gelb continued by saying how ‘Fidelio and other acts of artistic resistance symbolise the world’s fight for its inalienable right for justice, freedom and democracy: it also has some of the most heroically beautiful music ever composed.’
I have written before – and repeat here – that most readers will be aware how Beethoven was never entirely satisfied with Fidelio and there are indeed four possible overtures for it. In fact, what Beethoven left us with is probably more of a cantata than a fully-fledged opera. There can be many clunky transitions in the piece – superbly smoothed over in this revival – which often fragment the drama into individual ‘numbers’. In the first act for instance, we have the Jaquino/Marzelline duet, Marzelline’s aria, a quartet, Rocco’s ‘gold’ aria, a trio, a march, Don Pizarro’s ‘vengeance aria’, another duet, Leonore’s big scena, a chorus for the prisoners (‘O welche Lust’), and the finale.
In Act II, there is Florestan’s scena, Leonore and Rocco’s gravedigging duet, another trio and finally a dramatic quartet when Pizarro nearly dispatches Florestan. All this is followed by a trumpet call after which our hero and heroine are saved when Minister of State, Don Fernando, arrives to joy and relief all round. There is a love duet (‘O namenlose Freude!) and the chorus sings Leonore’s praises. The text on the scrim before each act of Flimm’s staging reads ‘Wahre liebe fürchtet nicht’ (‘True love knows no fear’) and we hear these words sung near the end of the opera. It is Beethoven’s vision of love and justice which triumphs in the end, pointing as it does – if a tad optimistically from a 2025 perspective – to a much better future in a fairer world.
Robert Israel’s set for Act l has foreboding, claustrophobic huge concrete walls and, on one side, there are cells on three levels supported by metal girders and hints of domesticity with all the potted plants and an ironing board on the other. Regardless of which it is all very oppressive and clearly a harsh, restrictive environment. The armed guards wear khaki uniforms and everything – apart from Marzelline’s red floral print dress, and some flowers, including red roses – is depressingly grey and dark. Swords are replaced by semi-automatic weapons and knives by Glocks; though oddly Don Pizarro still attempts to stab Florestan in the second act.
Where in the world are we? For me, probably wrongly, I thought about a mid-twentieth century American penitentiary (Alcatraz came to mind), but it could be in any of the world’s totalitarian states you might care to mention. The guard tower during the final scene has a statue of a vainglorious leader on a horse which is attacked and on which a bruised and battered Pizarro, the cruel governor, gets hung. It could be Germany, of course, because the dungeon scene’s pile of luggage on one side and shoes on the other are chilling reminders of Nazi concentration camps. Inexplicably Florestan’s ‘shackles’ looked so fragile that with a quick tug he surely would have set himself free and attempted his escape.
I have a long history with Fidelio beginning at the London Coliseum in 1980 with Josephine Barstow (Leonore) and Alberto Remedios (Florestan) and innumerable performances have followed including at Covent Garden in 1983 with Linda Esther Gray (Leonore) and Jon Vickers (Florestan). It is an opera I have returned to – like Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos – hoping to discover what, to put it crudely, all the fuss is about. It has taken 45 years to see and hear such an engrossing Fidelio that held me right to its happy ending. Why was this? Well, it needed those seven stars in the cast and Susanna Mälkki’s very impressive conducting. She inspired the impeccable Met Orchestra into an account of Beethoven’s colourful score which took no prisoners (!), banished any possible longueurs and imbued it all with a compelling humanity and revolutionary spirit.
In my experience there has never been a more convincing Fidelio (Leonore disguised as a man) than Lise Davidsen and you could easily believe open-faced Ying Fang’s affectingly guileless – and delightful sung – Marzelline’s infatuation with her. She herself is almost relentlessly pursued by Jaquino, one of the guards who is almost as interested in his weapons as he is in Marzelline. He was pleasantly sung by Met debutant Magnus Dietrich and the production (revived here by Gina Lapinski) allows Jaquino a poignant reconciliation with Marzelline at the end after her heartbreaking realisation she has been deceived.
Davidsen after so much early promise had seemed to flatline recently in her performances I have seen lately, even of Wagner, but she was totally believable as the courageous Leonore willing to risk all to rescue her political-prisoner husband from certain death. Her acting – and that of the entire principal cast – was worthy of Broadway and not just Lincoln Centre; they were all engaged, convincing and compelling even when just speaking the dialogue. All Leonore’s hopes and travails were expressed on Davidsen’s face and in her magnificent singing, with the highlight being the Act I ‘Abscheulicher’, which moved from anger to steely resolve and the urgency to complete her rescue mission. Though pregnant with twins, all credit to Davidsen for still scrambling up and down ladders in her last singing engagement before maternity leave!
British heroic tenor David Butt Philip seems feted more abroad than he ever would be in his own country. That he was a former chorister is plain to hear from his voice which is more Klaus Florian Vogt than Jon Vickers. He does not pin us back in our seats with the high G on ‘Gott!’, the opening word of the second act, yet begins on a plaintive thread of sound which swells and swells. Butt Philip does not exactly make light of the fiendish demands of Florestan but is not defeated by them as some I have heard.
To suggest the remaining singers ‘complete’ the cast is doing them less justice than they deserve: René Pape returns to the role of Rocco he created in Flimm’s Fidelio in 2000 and was the epitome of a kind-hearted, if self-interested – jailer; Tomasz Konieczny was rather one-dimensional as the malevolent Don Pizarro, though that may be more Beethoven’s fault than the singer’s; and Stephen Milling brought some sepulchral bass tones to the benevolent Don Fernando who restores justice for all. Tilman Michael’s Met Chorus sang the Act I ode to freedom (the men) and the final celebratory chorus (the men and women) with great feeling and full-bodied sound, though they were rather too static at times until all the jubilation as the curtain came down had them jiggling around risibly.
Jim Pritchard
Production:
Director – Jürgen Flimm
Revival Stage director – Gina Lapinski
Sets – Robert Israel
Costumes – Florence von Gerkan
Lighting – Duane Schuler
Chorus director – Tilman Michael
The Met: Live in HD Host – Ben Bliss
Cast:
Leonore – Lise Davidsen
Florestan – David Butt Philip
Don Pizzaro – Tomasz Konieczny
Rocco – René Pape
Marzelline – Ying Fang
Jaquino – Magnus Dietrich
Don Fernando – Stephen Milling
First Prisoner – Jonghyun Park
Second Prisoner – Jeongcheol Cha