Fidelio

Synopsis

"Fidelio" is the name assumed by Leonore, whose innocent husband Florestan has been imprisoned without trial by a corrupt political regime. Her risky two-year search for him has led to her disguising herself as a political agent, and infiltrating the prison where she believes him to be incarcerated Her fears are justified, and she even finds herself digging his grave, prior to summary execution. The moving love-story of their apparently doomed reconciliation reaches heights of joy when an unexpected amnesty leads to his release, and her pardon form impersonation.

Our Review:

2 July 2010

No beating about the bush: Florestan’s prison is Guantanamo Bay and Don Pizarro is a corrupt U.S. general. Flawed though it is in places, Opera Holland Park’s riveting Fidelio, a revival of Olivia Fuchs’s 2003 production, shines a harsh light on America’s shame and rails against it with savage fervour.

The director’s polemical approach cuts across Beethoven’s own intentions, however. Whereas the composer sought to present degradation as the doorway to redemption, Fuchs takes a cynical view even of freedom. Thus Don Fernando’s goodness is tainted by his eye for a news headline while the normally sympathetic Jaquino, Marzelline’s spurned suitor, revels in acts of gratuitous cruelty towards his charges.

How chilling it is to see terrified internees in orange jumpsuits feel their way into the light during the prisoners’ chorus, ‘O welche Lust’. This transcendent scene is conceived and realised with imp...

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