Fidelio

Visiting this production on VHS, trying to see as many Fidelio productions as possible, I found this one pretty shocking. Of course it does have redeeming qualities, the orchestra do play strongly and are together and balanced, if never particularly exciting. And there are three good performances. Roland Bracht has a rich voice and is appropriately sympathetic as the kindly if morally-compromised Rocco. Stella Kleindienst is charming as Marzelline, and Jonas Kaufmann sings beautifully, acts compellingly(considering what he had to work with) and has a lot of musicality. It is a shame however that these three weren't enough to save a Fidelio that managed to be dull and weird.

The rest of the cast didn't impress really. Renate Behle is better than she was as Brunnhilde in the 2004 Die Walkure(also from Stuttgart), but her voice as Leonore is still shrill and sounds awkward on the runs and her body still buckles when she is under pressure. She is reasonably good in Mir Ist So Wunderbar, but in her more thrilling moments such as in Abscheulischer you can really tell that the role is too heavy for her and she does little with it. Robert Gambill fares a little better actually, he is a decent actor trying to give intensity and poignancy to Florestan. But I don't care for his voice here, I like the baritonal quality of his middle register, but his top sounds strained and his phrasing strident. Michael Ebbecke is an undistinguished Don Fernando, the character's dignity never comes across, while Wolfgang Probst's Pizarro is not authoritative or sinister enough and often resorts to shouting.

The conducting is never really involving for my tastes, a lot of the time it is plodding. The chorus are unmotivated and neither of their big choruses come to life, you don't feel the rousing joy of the final scene and the poignancy of O Welche Lust is also lost. The sound quality also sounds distant, almost as if the whole production is in a dungeon. Some scenes even have odd sound effects like birds chirping and clangy noises that you can hear clearly in the very fragmented and overlong silent moments. What spoilt this Fidelio was how it was staged. The sets don't look like a prison setting and is lit far too dimly that you struggle to see what is going on. The costumes I also didn't care for, for example Marzelline looks like a goth and Jacquino a drug lord, didn't get it. Nor the staging, the worst being the duet between Marzelline and Jacquino with men in their underwear and cleaning their teeth as he tries to rape her(which I think distorts the character actually).

Overall, a shocking, dull, weird and on the whole pretty poor Fidelio, with only the orchestra and three performances redeeming it. 4/10 Bethany Cox