Grand, Leeds
The opening night of Opera North's Fidelio was beset by problems that made assessment difficult. An electrical fault caused the pit lights to fail twice in act one: at the end of the quartet, then partway through Rocco's gold aria. The performance was suspended while the fault was fixed, but when it resumed, there was a notable dip in the intensity of Richard Armstrong's conducting, while both Jeremy White's Rocco and Emma Bell's Leonore were both affected.
The whole evening, in fact, never quite recovered. There were moments of great power, but the cumulative impact was inevitably impaired. Armstrong's insight was apparent in such details as the physical surge of elation at the moment of liberation, and the slower-than-usual tempo for O Namenlose Freude, a love duet as well as an ecstatic song of reunion. White seemed jolted by the pause into temporary intonation problems. We didn't really hear the familiar fire in Bell's voice until she reached act two. The finest singing came from Andrew Foster-Williams's evilly beautiful Pizarro and Steven Harrison's visionary Florestan. Neither, of course, appeared until after the unscheduled break.
Tim Albery's production ? new to Opera North, but first given by Scottish Opera in 1994 ? rouses mixed feelings. It's strong on claustrophobia, and telling in its definition of Pizarro as an oily bureaucrat rather than a totalitarian thug. Albery courts controversy at the end, however, by arguing that our own faceless modernity is an effective betrayal of Beethoven's revolutionary politics. He may be right, but it makes for a downbeat close to a work that should end in a shattering blaze of glory.
Laura Harring Naomi Watts Leonor Varela Joanne Montanez Michelle Obama
No comments:
Post a Comment