Mir Ist So Wunderbar: Fidelio at the Met

Happy families? Müller, Struckmann, Pieczonka in Act I
Photo (c) Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

It is well-documented that I love Fidelio. Inconsistently written and dramatically thin it may be, but it is also musically sublime, and its spare lines feel more plausible than many a fussier plot. I find its musical and dramatic structure -- moving from comedy to claustrophobia and back again -- compelling. And, not least, it can feel, psychologically, absolutely right, despite or through its melodrama. The musical and theatrical challenges of staging it, of course, are considerable, and the Met's current run satisfies the former better than the latter. The principals offered strong and emotionally nuanced singing. The production, however, balancing uneasily between artificiality and realism, appeared to lack a strong directorial hand governing the intense, complex, and potentially ambiguous relationships among the opera's characters. Crucially, the superb Met chorus was on excellent form, and the orchestra, under Sebastian Weigle, gave full honors to the gravitas of the score without letting it become ponderous.

Having seen Jürgen Flimm's 2000 production on DVD, I was frankly expecting to enjoy it more than I did. Some elements were both striking and effective: Rocco's tidy idyll of bourgeois domesticity existing opposite from and enabled by the cell block; the stack of prisoners' confiscated belongings consigned to the same subterranean space as Florestan. Also very poignant is the fact that when the 2nd Prisoner says "Wir sind belauscht mit Ohr und Blick!" he is referring to Fidelio's surveillance. But the crowded stage, and sometimes fussy stage business, too often works against emotional intimacy. Flimm's production seems to take the unfashionably sincere text about the power of love, etc., entirely at its word. (Parenthetically, why have I never seen an Old Hollywood production of Fidelio, using that instantly recognizable visual vocabulary of uncynical heroism? If anyone knows of one, please let me know in the comments.) A confusing exception was that Don Pizarro is beaten to death at the conclusion, albeit just off stage. If the bullying armies have merely passed from the command of one venal leader to another, what is the point? Intellectually, I don't mind a Fidelio production that reads against the text, and I enjoy abstract ones; but this moment of violence seemed inconsistent with the rest of the production. Moreover, I never felt that -- at least in this revival -- a stylistic balance between realism and theatricality was satisfactorily struck. Often, the characters declaim forthrightly to the audience their stifled passion, or their private fears, or their incandescent rage. In the case of Leonore especially, I felt that the ability to vent these dangerous feelings so easily, merely by facing the stage's fourth wall, rather undermined a sense of their explosive dramatic power.

Lieben, hassen, hoffen, zagen: Ariadne auf Naxos in Frankfurt

Artistic philosophies go head to head. Photo (c) Oper Frankfurt/Monika Rittershaus

Brigitte Fassbaender's new production of Ariadne auf Naxos for Frankfurt's opera house has me falling in love with Strauss's opera all over again. It works on multiple narrative levels, as perhaps any production of Ariadne must if it is to work at all. The hectic backstage activity of the prologue is organized around the poignantly relevant struggles of opera to function as heilige Kunst when treated as commercial product (musikalisches Handwerk, as the Haushofmeister dismissively puts it.) The production was musically sensitive and creative throughout, beginning during the overture with a dance only half seen. The curtain (black, bisected with a red line) was raised just enough to show us feet and calves, some instantly identifiable, some not, dancing waltzes and Charlestons in shifting pairings, at least one of which was of two women.  When the curtain is fully raised on the house of the richest man in Vienna, we're in the improvised back stage area, with half a dozen dressing rooms opening off a central hall. There's a suggestion of surrealism provided by a painting on the wall (see above) and lines that draw the eye strongly. Thus, while there were often multiple vignettes occurring simultaneously, I never felt overwhelmed.

The mercurial musical moods of the prologue were handled deftly: the conversation (if it can be called that when people are talking past each other) between the Haushofmeister and the Musiklehrer was unusually moving, but there were also moments of sly humor. There is at least the possibility that while the Komponist muses on art after his altercation with the lackey, absolutely everyone else is having sex behind closed doors. Although there are moments of sympathy between the artistic factions, tempers are running high when the entrance of the guests forces the end of the prologue. When the curtain opens again on the opera, everything was just different enough that I asked myself whether it was a dream landscape; I don't think it was, necessarily, but it was reminiscent of one, perhaps by Hitchcock, where individuals are forced into unaccustomed relationships with their surroundings. Ariadne's thread, that symbol of navigating perils, has been broken in pieces, and the denizens of the island make to mend it. At the outset, the efforts of the commedia troupe to insert themselves in the action are grotesquely miscalculated, but gradual adjustment takes place so that genuine interactions become the basis of a rapprochement. This may sound banal, but was sensitive and nuanced. The Komponist's vision, of course, is not fully realized; but working together, the artists--with the formerly opposed groups integrated--achieve something like transcendence.

Perfecting perspective: divinity of music. Photo (c) Oper Frankfurt/Monika Rittershaus