Coliseum
Florestan – Stuart Skelton
Leonore – Emma Bell
Rocco – James Creswell
Marzelline – Sarah Tynan
Jaquino – Adrian Dwyer
Don Pizarro – Philip Horst
Don Fernando – Roland Wood
First Prisoner – Anton Rich
Second Prisoner – Ronald Nairne
Calixto Bieito (director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)
Tim Mitchell (lighting)
Ingo Krügler (costumes)
Chorus and Additional Chorus
of the English National Opera (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Orchestra of the English
National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)
More than two centuries on, Fidelio may well remain the most misunderstood
opera of all. Irrelevant and downright stupid criticisms continue to be made of
it, those voicing them apparently blind to what one would have thought the
blindingly obvious truth that it not only represents, but instantiates the
bourgeois idea of freedom at its most inspiring, apparently deaf to the
symphonism of this most symphonic of operas, that idea of freedom explicitly
expressed through the structural dialectics of Beethoven’s score. What a
relief, then, for ENO’s new Fidelio,
a co-production with the Bavarian State Opera, where it has already been seen,
to be staged both as an expression and a deconstruction of that idea. Such
problem as there were lay with Edward Gardner’s Harnoncourt-lite conducting,
but Calixto Bieito’s imaginative, probing production offered one of those rare
evenings in which a staging could more or less redeem a disappointing
conductor. For that, of course, an often excellent cast should also share the
credit.
Recent performances of Fidelio have tended to make a point of
messing around with the work: re-ordering, new dialogue, and so forth. I have
never quite understood why; the libretto is no literary masterpiece, but that
is hardly the point, for it serves Beethoven’s purpose. Bieito – I assume this to
be his doing – also makes changes; this was probably the first occasion on
which I found the choices worth making, not as a blueprint for other
performances, but simply as a valid performing choice in this particular
context. Alarm bells would normally ring were a performance to open with the
third Leonore Overture; even Daniel
Barenboim, in a
magnificent Proms concert performance, failed to convince that such was a
wise move, the overture tending to overshadow, almost to render the opera
unnecessary. Yet, following a blinding light and our first reading from Borges,
the appearance of the pitiless, intermittently neon-lit labyrinth, a fine piece
of design by Rebecca Ringst, not only sets up our expectations – the
hopelessness of blind alleys and imprisonment for all concerned – but, in
tandem with the overture in which Beethoven essentially presents a symphonic
poem, both heightens and deconstructs those expectations. As an audience, also imprisoned
in our different ways, we will the prisoners to escape, we begin to ask
ourselves how we too might escape, and, perhaps most importantly of all, we
already begin to appreciate that this will be a far tougher battle than
Beethoven might ever have conceived. That the drama has in a sense been played
out before a note has been sung and we have progressed not an inch is, or ought
to provoke sober reflection. (The ridiculous booing form small sections of the
audience, doubtless fresh, as a Twitter friend suggested, from the UKIP party
conference, suggested, sadly if all too predictably, as another Twitter friend
commented, that those most in need of the production’s message would never
trouble themselves to heed it. At least, however, we can take a small degree of
comfort from their discomfort.)
As ever, with Bieito, the craft
of stage direction is exemplary; what we see is what he intends us to see. (Yes,
this ought to be a given, yet all too often it is anything but.) I could not
help but wonder whether survival of dialogue, not necessary all of it, might
have aided understanding of who the characters were, but of course, as stated
previously, the characters, such as they are, are really not the point in this
of all operas. Borges and, on one occasion, Cormac McCarthy (as I learned from
the programme) do sterling work instead: allowing us to think for ourselves, to
make correspondences, rather than necessarily have our vision restricted to
Guantánamo Bay, or wherever it might be (perfectly valid though that realistic
approach may be). It is a pity that David Pountney’s translation veers all over
the place: sometimes offering attention-seeking rhymes, sometimes curiously
Victorian formulations, sometimes more present-day demotic. Yet even though it
sounds in serious need of editorial attention, or better still rejection in
favour of the German Beethoven set, there are phrases that stick with one,
phrases that interact with the staging, to have us think. ‘Crimes against
humanity’, a sadly everyday phrase in many respects: how could a London
audience not think of a war criminal still very much amongst us such as Tony
Blair? Bieito’s relative abstraction – unusual for him, and highly telling –
permits the space for reflection, whilst listening to the progress of Beethoven’s
drama.
It is that sureness of
musical touch that perhaps permits ‘liberties’, which, when recounted in the
abstract, might for some sound too much. Leonore
III already used, we hear – this a real coup
de théâtre in visual and musical terms – at the once ‘traditional’
juncture, music from, or perhaps beckoning us to, heaven, a Heiliger Dankgesang whose numinous
qualities, for which, many thanks to the excellent Heath Quartet, suspended in cages
from the ceiling, transcend the drama, question it, and are in turn questioned
by it. Bieito undercuts all-too-easy expectations by introducing a sense of distancing
already between Leonore and Florestan. And the caged musicians: are they a Stockhausen-like
flight of fancy? Are they angels of Beethovenian mercy? Are they too
imprisoned, sheltered from ‘reality’, whatever that might be? Are they, as the
minority audience reaction would suggest, fated to be ignored, whatever the
truth – so Beethovenian a word – of what they might attempt to express? We must
think for ourselves, and tragically, an administered world, to borrow Adorno’s
formulation, wishes to block them out, as sure as its gaolers wish us to think
of opera as nothing more than entertainment.
Entirely unprepared as I was
for that challenge to the musical work, provocative in the best sense, it made
as full as conceivable an impact upon me. Likewise Bieito’s trump card in the
final scene. Don Fernando makes his appearance as a stereotypical eighteenth-century
‘operatic’ character in a box above the stage. His increasingly bizarre and
unpredictable behaviour, not to mention outrageous feyness, have us realise,
both there and when he comes down to the stage, that rescue is not all that it
is cracked up to be. Indeed, though we are told that it has happened – many of
the prisoners are handed placards, personally signed, to signal their alleged
liberation – we wonder whether that is just a trick, perhaps an ‘operatic’
trick. There is no doubting Beethoven’s sincerity, his greatness; that endures.
But we also know that the administered world endures. The labyrinth does not
retreat; it is simply, as New Labour would have had it, ‘rebranded’. Political
action, whether individual or en masse,
is both absolutely necessary and quite hopeless. Fate, or rather the forces of
late-capitalist production, will find another way to trick us, in the manner of
Don Fernando; his apparently ‘arbitrary’ shooting of Florestan, not slain but
wounded, a truly shocking moment. And the return of blinding light has us
appreciate anew the perils both of the cyclical and of all-too-easy
identification of forces such as ‘light’ with progress.
The contrast between
Beethovenian optimism, the sheer goodness of the score, and its staged deconstruction
would of course have been greater still, had it not been for Gardner’s listless
conducting. Often simply too fast – the main body of the overture but a single,
albeit extreme example – the problem went beyond that; like Harnoncourt, the
conductor seemed to have little or no ear for harmonic rhythm. Numbers did not
extend beyond themselves; nor did that seem in itself a deconstructive
strategy, more a matter of reductive domestification by default. To a certain
extent, a grander canvas revealed itself during the second act, but structural
concerns still went for very little. There is no one ‘correct’ way to conduct Fidelio: consider the success of such
entirely different approaches as those of Furtwängler and Klemperer, or
latterly, Barenboim
and Colin Davis; but that does not mean that anything goes. We had, as I said, to rely upon the staging to accomplish double
the work; almost miraculously, it accomplished something not so very short of
that.
The singers’ accomplishment was
also not to be disregarded. Stuart Skelton offered the finest Florestan I have
heard since Jonas
Kaufmann: powerful yet vulnerable, clearly committed to the ideas of both
Beethoven and Bieito. If only he had not been harried by Gardner’s seeming
desire to catch an earlier train home. Emma Bell was an impressive Leonore, her
‘Abscheulicher’ almost beyond reproach, though certain coloratura later on was
skated over. More importantly, though, her identification not only with the
role but with that all-important idea of freedom, shone through. Sarah Tynan
proved an uncommonly excellent Marzelline, cleanly sung, vivacious, and equally
committed in dramatic terms. Though Jaquino is a smaller role, Adrian Dwyer
offered similar virtues when called upon. James Creswell was a likeable yet
properly tortured Rocco. The only vocal disappointment was Philip Horst’s often
lightweight Pizarro. Choral singing was
of a high standard throughout: a credit both to the singers and to Aidan Oliver
as chorus master.
Anyone, then, who cares about
opera as drama, who believes that it is something more than expensive
entertainment, needs to see – and to hear – Bieito’s Fidelio. Reactions will differ, but those willing to be challenged
will find themselves properly inspired and unsettled.
