At the Metropolitan Opera, performances of the same opera with the same singers just a few days apart often sound very different. During the recent run of Fidelio, for example, the opening night in the house was disappointing, whereas the live radio broadcast two weeks later had more to recommend it. Two factors explain the disparity.
One is limited rehearsal time. In an era of austerity and jet-setting stars, opening nights often sound scrappy. In her return to the Met in Fidelio, Finnish conductor Susanna Mäakli struggled to deliver an idiosyncratic interpretation of Beethoven’s problematic score, but entrances were ragged, transitions tentative, and the orchestral playing full of bloopers. The famous Prisoner’s Chorus lacked the magic one expects.
Two weeks later on the radio, both playing and singing were more polished, and Mäakli’s interpretation more convincing. The fleet tempos, extreme transparency, and flowing lines she achieves were impressive, especially in the opera’s opening (“Mozartian”) forty-five minutes.
In Act II, however, I was not the only one to miss the desperate passion, symphonic weight, and quasi-religious grandeur that conductors such as Furtwängler, Klemperer, Bernstein and Karajan have taught listeners to expect in this work. Still, Mäakli is an insightful and original young talent who deserves a second chance—perhaps in more appropriate repertoire.
A second factor differentiating successive nights at the Met is the enormous acoustic contrast between live and broadcast sound. Experienced live, the Met’s cavernous auditorium often diffuses vocal power. In part to focus the sound, its designers gave the space a cool and trumpet-like acoustic rather than the warmer and darker resonance of older and smaller (largely European) theaters. Recent structural changes—notably the installation of large cloth-covered lighting boxes in the middle rear of the orchestra section—further squeezes the sound.
As a result, Mäakli’s bass-light orchestral timbres often sounded underpowered, and so did the singing of the three leads, each of whom (for varied reasons) has a weaker lower register.
Rene Papé, who sang Rocco in this production’s premiere almost a quarter century ago, still commands idiomatic diction and phrasing. Yet, now more than ever, his elegant basso cantante is fundamentally unsuited to a role that has traditionally been the preserve of deep (“Schwartzen”) basses with an avuncular vocal timbre and the power to boom out low-lying passages. At the beginning of Act II, for example, one barely heard Rocco’s eerie refrain “frisch gegraben”— “freshly dug,” with its unnerving etymological hint of the “grave.”
The much-praised Lise Davidsen—who many view as the great hope among Wagner and Verdi sopranos—has never in my experience possessed the warm and dark “mezzo” sound most the dramatic soprano have. In this run, the bottom half of her voice sounded even weaker than usual—perhaps in part for the very understandable reason that she is pregnant with twins. Singing forte at the top of the voice, however, she continues to fill opera houses like no other singer of her generation.
To the role of Florestan, David Butt Philip does not bring a dramatic tenor but a lighter voice more reminiscent of Austrian tenor Julius Patzak’s celebrated account almost exactly 75 years ago. In the house, he fearlessly attacks the high tessitura andportrays an emotionally moving character—a very difficult task, albeit dispatched at times with less warmth and steadiness of tone than is ideal.
At the live premiere, the most memorable singing came instead from four secondary characters oft overlooked in performances of Fidelio. Making his house debut in the lyric tenor role of Jaquino, young German Magnus Dietrich sang with admirable clarity and intonation, while rendering word effortlessly intelligible. As Marzelline, Met regular Ying Fang once again displayed an uncanny ability to project her extremely delicate soprano throughout a large house, adding subtle interpretive twists one rarely hears in this slight role. Polish bass-baritone Thomas Konieczny exploited the edgy live acoustic to offer a hysterical portrayal of the villainous and tyrannical Don Pizarro. And veteran Danish bass Stephan Milling made the most of Don Fernando’s brief deus-ex-machina entry in the final scene, providing some resonant low notes missing elsewhere.
The acoustics of the radio broadcast (and, I assume, the live cinema version) revealed different vocal qualities. Met broadcasts are closely miked (which captures even the subtlest vocal details, reminiscent of listening on high-end headphones) and digitally “equalized.” This evened out the volume and resonance of singers and the orchestra.
Butt Philip’s singing seemed even clearer and Pape’s more balanced, but Davidsen benefited most of all. Broadcast sound boosted her lower notes and both softened and smoothed occasionally strident high ones. Indeed, listening to the broadcast left the impression of a very different singer: one with impeccable control of an unusually clear and beautiful upper-middle register, particularly at lower volume.
Yet cool and precise soprano singing does not make for a great performanceof Fidelio, live or on the radio. To overcome Beethoven’s slightly awkward music and a naively melodramatic libretto, only an incandescent performance will do. Leonore’s personal experience that the personal is the political unlocks the emotional core of this opera. We must hear her gentle love for a wronged husband become righteous anger, ultimately leading her to an unimaginably brave act of revolutionary defiance against political order. This transcendent experience is one reason why the opera enjoys a unique status across the German-speaking world as an ecstatic celebration of political freedom.
In the end, Davidsen’s restrained approach, combined with Jürgen Flimm’s cluttered and overly literal “modern” staging, left these performances firmly earthbound.
Andrew Moravcsik
Fidelio
Music composed by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner from Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly.
Cast and production staff:
Leonore – Lise Davidsen; Rocco – René Pape; Marzelline – Ying Fang; Jaquino – Magnus Dietrich; Florestan – David Butt Philip; Don Pizarro – Tomasz Konieczny; Don Fernando – Stephen Milling.
Conductor – Susanna Mälkki; Stage Director – Jürgen Flimm.
Metropolitan Opera, New York City, March 4 and March 15
Top image: Scene from Act I with cast
All photos by Karen Almond.