Fidelio

During the second half of the last century the only opera by Beethoven was more and more performed without the spoken dialogues. They were considered outdated and mainly redundant in delivering the musical drama as intended by the composer.

In 1985 the German philosopher/writer Walter Jens published his Rocco’s Erzählung in which he tells the events of the opera from the perspective of the prison guard Rocco, four years after they take place. Apart from giving a substitute for the outdated dialogues, by describing the ongoing action, his text is mainly about the dilemma of the lower middle class character (Kleinbürger) who must deal with the order of his superior, governor Pizarro, to kill the political prisoner and personal enemy of the governor, Floristan. He refuses to kill the prisoner, whom he for two years has almost starved to death, but is willing to delve his grave and so prepare the killing by the governor himself, being well paid to do so.

It is hard to overlook the intention of Jens: his portrait of Rocco stands for the ‘Befehl ist Befehl’ attitude that in his case is slightly corrected because of his refusal to kill face-to-face. In the grand scheme of the opera’s heroic action a character like Rocco will always be a victim, a necessary instrument but negligible as a person – dixit Jens.
The dialogues are problematic, but so is Walter Jens’ text. In as far as it describes the ongoing action, it is superfluous for the same reason why to a great extent the dialogues are: it interferes with the progress of the musical drama. That is why audiences and critics alike more often than not reacted negative when (part of) his text was used in performances. It was felt as an annoying distraction and interruption of the story to be told in music.
Even more problematic though is that his text diminishes the opera; it focuses too much on the psychology of this one character and in doing so distracts from the main themes of Fidelio. These are marital fidelity and love that make people rise above themselves; the abuse of political power and the utopian hope for freedom, equality and brotherhood of all people, as failed during the French Revolution. (But the ideals had an enormous impact on the world then and on Beethoven living in it.)




There is another way, never tried before, to enhance the opera as one of Beethoven’s great accomplishments and to put it in a new perspective: his perspective. By using his own voice as it is delivered in his letters and (between 1812 and 1818 ) in his diary notes it is possible to transmit the experience that Fidelio could only be composed by Beethoven and that he had to compose exactly this one opera.

Fidelio is known as a problematic opera, a genre in itself. But since long it holds repertoire. Why? Because it is the condensed expression of this particular man who happened to be a musical genius. And therefore the opera convinces in spite of - or better: thanks to - its unconventional form and the utopian finale - that anticipates the chorus finale Ode an die Freude of the ninth symphony which since 1985 is the anthem of the EU and an echo of the ideals of the French Revolution.
Beethoven added the following three lines to Schiller’s poem from 1785:

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen
Und Freudenvollere!

Followed by Schiller:

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligthum,
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

This is Beethoven the utopian. He must have known the poem when writing his first version of Fidelio in 1805. Oh Namenlose Freude. About twenty years later the poem inspires him (again?) for the finale of his last symphony. What else do you need when it comes to his deepest beliefs and convictions?
The cliché ‘the personal is politic’ was and again is topical. In Beethoven’s case this slogan seems to have been a genuine expression of the artist and the man. It is off course a romantic point of view. But not less valid because of that. Especially so if turned into music that demands the utmost rational control.

And there is endlessly more in the composer; as there is in the man Beethoven. His letters give ample proof of that.
Music lovers in the audience will, to give an example, be acquainted with Beethoven’s deafness. But it is quite another experience when an actor, a very good one, tells them about the increasing deafness in the composer’s own words, the consequences this had in his work and private life, and the constant tension between them.

NB The actor is not in the least trying to impersonate him; just addressing the audience in the suit he would ware at a première.

They might be aware of ‘Die entfernte Geliebte’, but again: to hear the actor talking to her, longing for her, missing her, and ultimately rest in it never to possess her, in the ‘voice’/text of B. - that is something of another order.

Beethoven’s increasing deafness brings with it an increasing isolation. From friends and from the world. His sole solace being his art. The devastating isolation of Floristan in the darkness of his prison longing for his Leonore can be seen as an image of how it must have felt for him.

By embedding and alternating the opera with an appropriate selection of texts from Beethoven, spoken by the actor, this striking parallel between the opera and his biography will come to the fore.

And what about the transition between the (for him) utopian union of Leonore and Floristan to the utopian finale for all mankind?
Well, Beethoven was clearly formed both by the ideals of the Enlightenment and by the countermovement of Romanticism. His ambition as a composer grew even with his isolation. He could and so he wanted to convincingly realise in his music what still is, and probably will always be, a Utopia in the real world. So for as long as the opera lasts not only Floristan is liberated, we all are.

Isn’t that precisely why his music till today gives a cathartic release to audiences?