![]() ![]() The tension never rose here, after a promising start with plenty of deft orchestral colour for Beethoven's least successful music in the early stages, where he tries to be Mozart and fails. Was Pappano keeping down the orchestra to try and help him? The beautiful horse on which he entered riveted all eyes, but, as the epitome of calm grace, the polar opposite of what the scene demands. Would a 1790s Marzelline, however traumatised, strip off in the room next door from her dad and attempt to unbutton her intended's trousers? Why try and convey military governer PIzarro's furious vengeful nature by having him take Marzelline's canary out of a cage, stroke it and throttle it – fine when the Beadle does it in the melodrama of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, random here? Something was, in any case, wrong with Simon Neal, pitchy with Pizarro's top notes, never suggesting the uncontrollable rage. If you're going for realism at first, stick to it. There is little clarity in the relations between Leonore disguised as "Fidelio", jailer's daughter Marzelline in love with "him" – Amanda Forsythe's light soprano can't carry the weight of character Kratzer wants to give her, though Elizabeth Watts, who played the role in the last Royal Opera staging might have managed it – Marzelline's suitor Jaquino, supposed I think to be a bit of a brute, but Robin Tritschler is way too nice, and Rocco himself, a role that has surprisingly little impact here despite the keen bass of Georg Zeppenfeld ( pictured below with Davidsen). ![]() This one is a mostly blithe dynamic journey to a significant rhythm, so a basket of heads dished out to newly-widowed women doesn't correspond. The misalliances start with business accompanying the overture to the revised and final opera of 1814, as opposed to Leonore Overtures 1, 2 or 3 (I hope we're going to get the radically different 1805 original before Beethoven anniversary year is out). Alas, Kratzer botches every possible correspondence between music and drama. Dramaturg Bettina Bartz explains all this admirably in the programme, with just a few loopholes (Beethoven is, after all, still following the rescue plot when she tells us he has opened up from drama to oratorio). Designer Rainer Sellmaier's mobile mix of dark prison yard and jailer Rocco's rooms couldn't be faulted, while no-one would object to the outwardly glaring lighting from Michael Bauer when the imprisoned Florestan's darkness is the hell within. The premise isn't a bad one: start at the end of the 18th century, with a supposedly realistic panorama of life in a French prison run by revolutionary forces – Beethoven's move to Spain was, after all, a matter of evading the censors - and surround the characters in Act Two with a contemporary ring of spectators (the chorus, as us – scene pictured below). ![]() The serious inequality is between what we hear and what we see. But the last, more bitter laugh is on both the audience and the director, Tobias Kratzer, who cheats Beethoven's admittedly lopsided liberation opera of its significant events and, ultimately, some fine singers, above all the eagerly-awaited Lise Davidsen and Jonas Kaufmann, along with their conductor, Antonio Pappano, of what has to be true music-theatre if it is to involve and move us. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |