Attending a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Opéra Comique has something special about. Other than the connections between the genre opéra comique and the Singspiel (and the libretto’s French source), it is exactly the kind of theatre where this work would be staged in Beethoven’s time both in terms of size and acoustics. Conductor Raphaël Pichon himself shares in an interview how the venue made him look for an early 19th century rather than a late 19th century perspective for his take on it, a work “between Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Weber’s Der Freischütz”. In other words, performing it as Beethoven might have “heard” it. The inverted commas are not facetious. It is irrelevant whether Beethoven was able to clearly hear or not a performance of his Fidelio. The composer increasingly conceived music that challenged the technical possibilities of both instruments and voices at the time. That is why I’m always worried when I hear about a historically informed approach in Beethoven. To be honest, I don’t think that hearing a work “the way the composer is supposed to have heard” is something valid in itself. What I personally care is hearing the work at its structurally clearest and most expressive. If that isn’t the way the composer was able to hear it, too bad for him… Anyway, I seriously doubt that Beethoven would have chosen this afternoon’s performance over, say, Karl Böhm’s Dresden recording. Does the DG set with the Staatskapelle seem a bit Wagnerian? Yes, but I guess if you asked Wagner, he’d say without Fidelio he wouldn’t have become the composer he became in the first place.
Does that mean I disliked Mr. Pichon’s conducting? Not at all. I actually believe he has all right the measure of the work. I probably never heard the quartet Es schlägt der Rache Stunde in a live performance as clearly as I have today. If I have to say something about Mr. Pichon’s view of the work is that he could give it a bit more time to produce the right emotional effect rather than sticking that much to the metronome. For instance, in the Leonore/Florestan/Rocco trio, when Leonore gives her husband a piece of bread, it’s the first time she goes near him in years. It is the moment she dreamed about night after night, the music is crying for some flexibility there. Today it sounded extremely matter of fact. And that happened elsewhere too often this afternoon.
I also wonder if Pygmalion is the right orchestra for this work. Again I’ll be honest – I don’t think Fidelio gains anything in being perform with period instruments. On the contrary. There is no increased clarity or even tonal variety. This afternoon the orchestra sounded mostly edgy, its strings’ clarity of articulation mostly lost in a brassy overall impression. Maybe I’m too used for hearing strings enveloping singers’ voices rather than obscuring it, but sometimes it felt like noise to the singing line. And maybe I’m too used to noble sounding rather than squawking French horn in Leonore’s aria. This might work in a period performance of Così fan tutte, where Fiordiligi’s Per pietà is about the kind of fidelity that does survive one day of absence (and that’s why the horns are there, as a traditional expression of INfidelity in romance languages). But that’s not what Leonore is talking about here.
Mr. Pichon also disagrees with the opinion that Beethoven did not know how to write for the human voice and decided to invite a lyric rather than a dramatic soprano for the title role. The problem is that there are all kinds of lyric sopranos. When summoned by Herbert von Karajan to sing the role, Gundula Janowitz asked some time to think and finally decided she wasn’t ready. And yet this legendary German soprano had already sung Elisabeth, Elsa, Eva, the Empress in Strauss’s Frau ohne Schatten, Odabella in Verdi’s Attila and Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème when she finally sang it in the Vienna State Opera for Leonard Bernstein, who wanted instead Gwyneth Jones in her place. Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg felt ready for it after having tackled Agathe in Freischütz.
I saw Ms. Stagg sing Mozart’s concert aria Bella mia fiamma (for Mr. Pichon in Salzburg), and I thought it was too heavy for her (you’ll find it sung by the likes of Margaret Price and Julia Varady in recordings). Even in an auditorium as small as the one at Salle Favart, she sounds mousy in face of the formidable challenges in the part. Nobody can say she did not sing correctly – she did. But who cares? The tonal quality was matte, the high notes lacked radiance, her Marzelline overshadowed her in ensembles. At least at this point of her career, it is simply not a role for her voice. What she lacked in vocal exuberance, she almost compensated by subtle and efficient acting – and the video close-ups only highlighted her abilities.
Although Mari Eriksmoen’s soprano is on the monochromatic side, her high notes – as mentioned – blossomed and ran in the hall. She is comfortable with the style and came across as a competent if rather cold Marzelline.
On paper, Michael Spyres’s voice is also light for the role of Florestan. Yet his tenor has enough color for it and he masters the art of focusing the tone and piercing the orchestra. He is also very cunning and used every opportunity in his aria to relax and offered a far more varied interpretation than I am used to hear in it. It’s still a big sing for him, but he made it work. In the end of the afternoon, one would consider his the most expressive performance in this Fidelio. He couldn’t be more contrasted with the Jacquino, Linard Vrielink, whose tenor is a tad artificial darkened and a bit short of overtones (what seems to be a tendency these days).
Bass baritone Gabor Bretz, on the other hand, has the right color for the role of Pizarro, but at least this afternoon not the weight or the volume, his voice mostly staying on stage and lacking therefore menace. Veteran Albert Dohmen seemed to be there to prove that a large voice makes all the difference of the world in this repertoire. He sounded less rusty than last time I saw him and, other than some shortness of legato in his upper reaches, offered an exemplary account of the part of Rocco. Last but no lease, Christian Immler was as noble toned as the part of Don Fernando requires.Even if the Pygmalion chorus looked understaffed for this work, their singing was effective enough, clear and well balanced.
At first, Cyril Teste’s staging could make you think Florestan had been arrested in Switzerland: there are very few prisoners, everything looks shining new and the wardens have Eames office chairs. But then you realize that the prisoners are tortured and there’s lethal injection there, so the whole thing is rather related to the stage designer’s intent of making it a stylish place of violation of human rights. As cameras making close up of actors seems to be pretty much the trendy thing to do in terms of staging these days (you just need to see Guy Cassiers’s adaptation of Dostoievski’s The Demons at the Comédie Française for another example), there is a cameraman on stage as if a documentary were being made. The images are projected on screens mounted on wheeled frames. As written above, the director took advantage of his leading lady’s acting abilities for some touching effects. When Leonore looses her gun in the confrontation scene, she grabs the camera, which seems to frighten Pizarro more than the pistol. Unfortunately, there are moments when one feels that director is a bit at a loss for ideas and then there is no economy of clichés. In the end – and this seems to have been made on purpose – it all looks crafty yet emotionally cold.
Finally, I must make a disclaimer. I am so fond of Beethoven’s final version of Fidelio that I can’t repress my irritation when I have to hear any replacement of the 1814 music by any of the composer’s early ideas. And the final O Gott, welch ein Augenblick is one of my favorite pieces of music. I felt shortchanged by having to hear the version Beethoven himself though it better to rewrite. But that’s me. End of rant.
Read Full Post »