brucepeters

Think of opera and what comes to mind? A grand spectacle: the singing, the orchestra, the plot's intricacies, hosts of characters with exuberant costumes. Yet Beethoven's only opera Fidelio, is at its essence, the opposite of grandeur. It is an intimate story about personal strength, forged from the love between a husband and wife, in a time of tyranny.

Fidelio is at the center of director Kerry Candaele's 2023 film Love and Justice, but the film is not a performance of the opera. Instead, the film explores Fidelio's story, its themes, and its relevance today.

Like the opera, Candaele's exploration of Fidelio is intimate - it centers around one young, Chilean woman, driven by love for a grandfather she's never known, personally confronting the legacy of Pinochet's dictatorship.

Candaele arranges his supporting cast around her story - using conversations with the woman and her family, with a Beethoven scholar, archival footage, and even a few anecdotes from the director himself.

Snippets of Fidelio's music - raw and vital - punctuate the film in a way that reinforce the intimacy and emphasize the humanity at the heart of the opera. To be sure, there is a place in the world for grand opera, but the performances in Love and Justice show there is a place too for more intimate settings - some things are lost amongst the grandeur.

Ultimately, both Fidelio and the film bear witness to the Wonder, the Miracle really, that humans can create Love, Justice, and Beauty out of lives full of hardship and cruelty.

Watch the trailer. Then see the film.

Schiller's poem is prophetic. A spark from the Enlightenment, the poem captivated Beethoven in his 20s. When he wrote his Ninth symphony 30 years later, he used Schiller's spark to ignite a flame, which he presented to the world. That flame forges a Humanity - a brotherhood - among those touched by it. The poem and the music thus have the power to create a joy in brotherhood: the very Joy they describe. They become self-sustaining.

And so the words "Alle Menschen werden Brueder", ("All men (mankind) become brothers") become prophetic. Their prophesy is fulfilled almost by fiat, simply by their declaration. With each performance, the spark of Humanity is rekindled; in the performers and the audience who are alert to it.

Candaele's film, the stories it tells, and the people it introduces, can awaken that Humanity in its audience. "Following the Ninth", helps spread Schiller's spark, from Weimar and Vienna -- through London, Santiago, Beijing, Berlin, and Tokyo -- to each viewer in each audience. In a real sense, the film helps fulfill the prophesy of Schiller's poem. No small accomplishment.

Epilogue: My enthusiasm borders on zealotry. I know that. Even so, the Joy expressed in the symphony and the film is so fundamental that I feel it is independent of religious or metaphysical entanglements. It is too fundamental to being Human.