I struggle to understand what the problem is with FIDELIO?

As the only opera (albeit in two versions) of the man who is - let us say - "the world's most iconic composer", the neglect of this work in discussion, in opera houses, and amongst recordings does strike me as puzzling. 

Is it because its message of freedom necessarily means considering what repression looks like also - "box-office poison" to our lighthearted age of jollity and can-can dancers?   Do Governments (who, err, fund opera-houses) fear that the figure of Pizarro is a bit uncomfortably near reality?   Is it too "lefty" for the "New World Orderers" in charge of today's world?

Or is the problem in the music?  Perhaps I'm in a minority who relish this adrenaline-infused, turbulent outpouring of the desire to be free?   Is it too dull?  Does the score lack variety?  Is the story pants?

Whatever the reason, it's fallen from favour.  Neither ENO or ROH have it in repertoire - nor have they had it on stage in years.  I'm not aware of SO or WNO or ON doing it.  Even Holland Park - who like to revisit repertoire warhorses - leave it alone.   Here at my end of Europe, the Bolshoi haven't done it since the 60s.  Stanislavsky prepared a concert-performance version to do whilst they were homeless during rebuilding - and it was cancelled, and never done at all.

Do we think this will continue?   Will it sink to the forgotten level of those other "heroic" operas of the early C19th - WILLIAM TELL, LODOISKA, DER FREISCHUTZ?   Taught on University syllabuses as socio-historic examples that merely bridge the gap between Mozart and Wagner?

And what of LEONORE?  A worthwhile version in its own right - or just a foot-in-the-door for HIP orchestras to play mainstream operas on the "your-only-chance-to-hear" ticket?

The casting is certainly part of the problem: I'm trying hard to remember who was in that same ROH production when I saw it a dozen or so years before PW: an Eastern European tenor, possibly Vilém Přibyl? Michael Langdon as Rocco, John Dobson as Jaquino and Elizabeth Harwood as Marzelinne seem likely, but I've no idea who sung Leonore, nor who conducted. If I still have the programme, it will be in storage.

It's out of step with present times, perhaps: maybe its time will come again. 

Gosh!

I have to confess to knowing no more about Fidelio than Mr Sudden does. I do have the Gardiner Leonore but I'm not sure I've listened to it properly.

I in fact have the Gardiner Leonore in the same box as the Bernstein. Vol 4 of a big DG Beethoven edition.

Anyone know both? Which should I try first?

Or should I not bother and just go get the Klemperer? I do hope not.

This I find a little strange, in that there weren't any around at the time the piece was written, surely?

Well, I have the same box as you, Ollie, and find the Bernstein fair enough, though no match for the live Klemperer recording (an even better performance than the EMI studio recording).  As to the Gardiner Leonora, I'd suggest that you listen to that after Fidelio.

At the risk of encouraging derailment here, "freedom" is only a "relative term" in the mouths of people like Bush Jr who use it as an element in their "big lie" (to paraphrase Goebbels). "Left" and "right" are the relative terms here (and how many people actually know where they originated?). In rejecting tyranny, I wonder how atypical Beethoven's opera was in its time, leaving aside musical considerations for a moment (which, not knowing the work, I have to!). It can't have been the only opera at that time which expressed that aspect of revolutionary Zeitgeist.

I'm rather with you there - I find the Heldentenors are flagging terribly in much of the piece,  and the final "freedom" duet is often a ghastly mess when the tenor is too heavy for the role.   I could quite happily accept a Peter Schreier kind of voice in the part - I'm sure that's what Beethoven would have expected?   Someone who also sings Tamino and Max, in other words.