Robert Spano, Washington National Opera music director designate shared his thoughts on Beethoven’s Fidelio, which opens WNO’s 2024-2025 season:
Beethoven famously said, “Music is highest philosophy!” Fidelio, being his only opera, occupied his whole-hearted attention, and he poured not only his musical genius into it, but also his moral and intellectual credo: his humanitarianism, his political idealism, and indeed, his highest philosophy. As a result, this work is emblematic of his entire oeuvre. Other works leap to mind that are representative of his metaphysical, idealistic, and political preoccupations: the Eroica Symphony, the Fifth and Ninth symphonies, and the late piano sonatas and string quartets reach into the noumenal as few other works of music; but Fidelio held a special place in his heart and brings to life on stage his Promethean World of the Mind. It surely spoke to its time in the 18th century but speaks to us no less powerfully more than 200 years later.
Beethoven’s opera, according to its original librettist, Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, was based on a true story from the French Revolution, and brings to life the ideals of the Enlightenment, the foundational elements of our own Constitution. As Maestro Spano writes, 200 years later, current domestic and world events, as well as the global fight against terror and tyranny, make the drama of Fidelio feel very real. Beethoven knew all about oppression: the first version of the opera premiered in 1805, when Napoleon’s forces had invaded Vienna, and the final revision was performed in 1814, a time when the powerful secret police preyed on Vienna’s citizens. How did Beethoven get away with an opera about freedom, justice and human rights in this environment? By moving the story back in time to 16th century Spain.
Fidelio is a rescue opera—a popular genre which gave us Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio and Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, for example. In fact, the project began with a commission from Emanuel Schikaneder (an impresario who had worked with Mozart on the Magic Flute). That partnership came to naught, and Beethoven set about writing a new opera. However, Beethoven being Beethoven, he imbued this tale with characteristic realism and emotional depth. But it didn’t come easily: he struggled for ten years with three revisions of the opera and four attempts to devise the perfect overture. He finally found the right formula, and from the first noble fanfare of the Fidelio Overture, we’re drawn into a drama both heroic and tender, with a lovely horn motif showcasing the opera’s deeply loving heroine.
After the overture, we’re soon observing a surprisingly domestic scene within a forbidding prison. Marzelline, the young daughter of the warden, Rocco, is being wooed by Jaquino, the porter. Marzelline, however, has fallen in love with Fidelio, her father’s new employee (really Leonore in disguise). Leonore has infiltrated the prison to try and save her husband Florestan, who is being held as a secret political prisoner by Don Pizarro. In a masterful quartet, each of the 4 characters sings about his or her goals. Marzelline wants Fidelio, Jaquino wants Marzelline, Fidelio/Leonore wants Florestan and Rocco wants money.
As Fidelio insinuates herself into Rocco’s confidence, she persuades him to let the prisoners out for fresh air. With the Prisoners’ Chorus, O welche Lust, Beethoven teases us with a heavenly glimpse of freedom, makes us feel, along with the miserable prisoners, the sun on our faces, and the fresh, pure air outside their fetid cells.
In Act II, the orchestral introduction conjures terminal despair. An irate Pizarro forces the prisoners back to their dungeons and plots Florestan’s murder. Beethoven takes us deep underground to Florestan’s secret oubliette where his victim languishes in chains, freezing, parched, starving and dreaming of Leonore. Close by, Fidelio and Rocco are forced to dig his grave. Florestan sings the notoriously difficult recitative and aria Gott! Welch’ Dunkel hier! (his inexpressible suffering in that one word, Gott!)
The drama climaxes as Fidelio reveals her identity and confronts Pizarro at gunpoint, just as the trumpets sound the arrival of Florestan’s friend, the prime minister, who has come to inspect the prison and proceeds to free him and all Pizarro’s prisoners.
The Leonore Overture No.3 is often played here between the two scenes of Act II as a sort of recapitulation of the events of the opera.
In the final scene of rejoicing, the freed men and townspeople sing a triumphant chorus celebrating justice and freedom, in a chorus prefiguring the last movement of the Ninth Symphony. They hail the woman whose courage and love saved them from bondage. Leonore thus joins the pantheon of female symbols of freedom: Marianne in France, and her U.S. sister, the Statue of Liberty.
Some writers have found that Fidelio looks back to Mozart and forward to Wagner. Speaking of whom, WNO presents a special evening titled: Gods and Mortals, a Celebration of Wagner on October 26.
The soloists for this special event include Christine Goerke, Brandon Jovanovich, Derek Welton (Pizarro in Fidelio) and Soloman Howard.
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