Beethoven Fidelio
June 2007 Reviewed by: Wes Marshall Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

After spending an entire year in college studying Beethoven, sitting through all the symphonies, quartets and piano sonatas with a running commentary by our esteemed professor, I cautiously asked him why we didn’t study Fidelio. After all, written by the greatest composer (or at least most famous) working in the greatest idiom, Fidelio seemed like a natural. While he didn’t dismiss the opera, he made it clear that within the composer’s canon, Fidelio was not competitive. He wasn’t alone. That was the prevailing opinion.

So another student and I sat down with the Klemperer recording, and for over two hours, carefully followed the score and libretto. The emotions and drama stunned us. I wondered what happened to Fidelio’s legacy, so I set out on a private study of the piece. Here’s what I found.

First, the opera’s history is of fits and starts. Beethoven tinkered endlessly with libretto, structure, music and themes, composing multiple overtures and even changing the name of the opera in mid-stream. Historians seem to reason that if Beethoven wasn’t satisfied with it, the opera couldn’t be good. Don’t believe it. If Fidelio is sub-standard Beethoven -- and I’m not conceding that for a moment -- it beats the best of Bellini, for one example; I believe that Fidelio is superior to many standard repertoire operas; it just has a bad rep.

Second, opera companies are hesitant to mount Fidelio. Beethoven was a master instrumental composer, but he really didn’t understand singers. So he would ask them to cruise around outside their normal ranges and would stress their voices with awkward skips and jumps. And pity anyone singing the lead role, Leonore, where the problems multiply.

Lucky for us, the cast on this DVD is strong throughout. Lucia Popp as Marzelline is the standout. Her lovely, carefully nuanced singing of O wär ich schon mit dir vereint elicits shouts and loud applause from the appreciative audience. Janowitz and Kollo are a little mild mannered for their roles, but by the time their duet O namenlose Freude! rolls around, their joy captures the audience. Schenk’s directing is a little frenetic, but the sets are grand and appropriate to the story, and we do get beautiful close-ups of the acting.

For all the glory of sets, singing and directing, this really is Leonard Bernstein’s show. Shortly after he left the New York Philharmonic, he was adopted by the Viennese as their own musical lion. Something in the strudel made them suckers for his personal sense of dramatic rubato over written tempi and crescendi. And if ever an opera cried out for heart-on-the-sleeve dramatics, Fidelio does. Too slow or too liltingly classical and it loses its power. Bernstein treats it almost like Mahler, stretching, jumping, suddenly changing dynamics from a roar to a whisper.

Like most DG recordings of the day, Fidelio is recorded with Germanic precision. The singers’ voices are perfectly captured within the proceedings. The sound is flat in stereo, but when the rear channels are brought in, the soundstage expands nicely. The video is good quality for a 30-year-old TV show. As is depressingly normal for DG, there are no extras.

Fidelio’s celebration of freedom was of special importance to Bernstein, who understood that art has the power to unleash the positive spirit of humanity. He believed Fidelio to be one of music’s strongest substantiations of liberty and love. See if you don’t agree.

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