Beethoven - Fidelio (Zubin Mehta)

This video of Beethoven’s Fidelio was taped over four nights at the end of October, 2006 at the then year-old Palau de las Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. The production inaugurated the opera house’s first official season, and a cast of international opera stars was called upon to take part under Zubin Mehta’s leadership in an evocative production by Pierluigi Pier’Alli.

Set in a dreary prison-camp-type atmosphere at any period between Beethoven’s and the 20th century, with high, gray walls and an airless ambiance, Pier’Alli’s production stresses the mundanity and pervasiveness of evil: chains and spikes hang from the walls, and a closer look reveals that Marzelline’s ironing board is a torturer’s rack. Costumes are dreary. Marzelline is not only indifferent to Jaquino, she seems to openly dislike him; Rocco’s moral ambiguity leans away from the benign (his “Gold” aria seems brutal in some way); the soldiers are cutely dressed martinets unaware of their own evil; the prisoners exhibit no individual traits (they are dressed in dark clothing and hats, their faces barely discernible); Pizarro is the soul of icy authority and moves very little. The dungeon is narrow, with walls claustrophobically reaching to the top of the stage. There are both still and moving projections on the rear wall but they aren’t very clear to the video viewer. Chorus members hold hands during the finale while the projections transmogrify, but it comes across as poorly lit and blurry.

Peter Seiffert’s Florestan is worthy of the highest praise. His opening “Gott!” displays somewhat of a wobble, but his singing of the difficult recit and aria is thereafter masterly, with every note in the right place and the text enunciated with great drama. His near-hysteria when he asks Rocco to contact Leonora is on a par with Vickers’, and the joy he expresses in “Namenlöse Freude” is cathartic. A wonderful performance.

Dramatically, Waltraud Meier matches him. Looking slightly too beautiful for the character, she puts not a movement wrong, and her energy never flags. Would that her voice were as reliable. After a fine “Mir ist so wunderbar” her singing in “Gut, Söhnchen, gut” is ghastly–ugly and off key. She rallies for “Abscheulisher!” but the tone never really pleases and it’s like that throughout–good patches followed by simply terrible ones. The voice simply gets stuck, and we never know when something jarring is going to strike our ears.

Juha Uusitalo’s Pizarro may have been hampered by the way he was directed–standing stock still early on and actually covering his face with his cape in the dungeon scene à la Count Dracula; but he sings with potency and impressive tone. Matti Salminen’s familiar Rocco, as mentioned above, is coarser than usual, but he still has the vocal goods. Ildiko Raimondi’s Marzelline is well sung and truly petulant, while Rainer Trost’s survival in the role of Jaquino wearing the country-bumpkin wig he’s been given deserves an award. Carsten Stabell is a dignified Don Fernando. At the finale, by the way, you realize that Salminen, Seiffert, Uusitalo, and Stabell are a foot or two taller than anyone else on stage. There’s something very Fasolt-and-Fafner about the effect.

The Orquestra de la Communitat Valenciana, which I assume is a new group, plays very well for conductor Zubin Mehta, with bright brass, uniformly appealing strings, and fine woodwinds. Mehta’s tempos are peculiarly slow, and his overall approach lacks the Klemperian tautness needed to carry off such lengths: the opera’s early, Singspiel moments have no snap at all and the opening to Act 2 and Florestan’s aria are stretched to a dead-feeling 12 minutes. He includes the Leonore Overture No. 3 before the finale as well–always a good way to break the opera’s tension. The chorus sings handsomely and accurately, but with bizarrely accented German.

By my count there are seven other DVD versions of this opera available, and this one comes somewhere near the middle because of Meier’s and Mehta’s downward drag. It certainly can’t compare with the out-of-this-world Levine-led reading from the Met with the superb Karita Mattila and Ben Heppner (in a Jurgen Flimm production that works), but it’s better than the Haitink/Glyndebourne performance despite Elisabeth Soderstrom’s Leonore. I haven’t seen the TDK set from Zurich with the remarkable Jonas Kauffman, and the Bernstein/Janowitz set on DG is in a class by itself for sheer intensity despite sonics that cannot compare with either these or Levine’s and a somewhat wooden Florestan. In brief, then, Pier’Alli’s production is major (but probably was more effective live) and so is Seiffert, but if I had to own only two, it would be Levine first and Bernstein second. Subtitles are provided in French, English, Spanish, and German. Medici Arts ignores its Italian upbringing. Mattila/Levine (DG)

Performer:
Don Fernando - Carsten Stabell
Don Pizarro - Juha Uusitalo
Florestan - Peter Seiffert
Leonore - Waltraud Meier
Rocco - Matti Salminen
Marzelline - Ildikó Raimondi
Jaquino - Rainer Trost
Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana
Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana
Conductor - Zubin Mehta

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Beethoven - Fidelio (Leopold Ludwig, Lucia Popp)
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Beethoven - Fidelio (Artur Rot...y, Christa Ludwig, James King)
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