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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > The Opera House > Let us talk a little of FIDELIO...
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Author Topic: Let us talk a little of FIDELIO...  (Read 597 times)
richard barrett
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« Reply #45 on: 13:09:00, 11-09-2008 »
Quote from: stuart macrae on 12:56:44, 11-09-2008
Without having had a look at the libretto, I can't help wondering how the whole thing would come across without any of the dialogue or narration? Just the numbers, in other words, perhaps with a surtitle synopsis between scenes...

I suppose such a thing would be rather modern in character, presenting a sequence of tableaux rather than a complete narrative - but just how fragmented would it seem without the narrative elements, and would it be worth doing in this way?

Bruno Weil's recording of Der Freischütz attempts something like what you're suggesting (I think it was intended as a "Hörspiel"-like presentation rather than to be staged): all the spoken material was stripped out and replaced by newly-written brief spoken narrations which don't so much link the musical numbers together as put the entire opera so to speak in inverted commas. I find this recording fascinating, but my enthusiasm isn't shared by others here who know it. It isn't really in the strict sense a presentation of Weber's work though, but something else.

Personally I have no problem with spoken dialogue in opera, as long as it's well acted. Returning to Weber's opera (sorry about this!), Carlos Kleiber's magnificent recording uses actors for the dialogue and singers for the music ("you can't do that on stage" as someone once said), which works brilliantly except in so far as little attempt was made to match the voices to one another.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #46 on: 13:14:49, 11-09-2008 »
Quote from: stuart macrae on 12:56:44, 11-09-2008
Without having had a look at the libretto, I can't help wondering how the whole thing would come across without any of the dialogue or narration? Just the numbers, in other words, perhaps with a surtitle synopsis between scenes...

I suppose such a thing would be rather modern in character, presenting a sequence of tableaux rather than a complete narrative - but just how fragmented would it seem without the narrative elements, and would it be worth doing in this way?

I've seen CARMEN done that way, reasonably credibly.  I think FIDELIO would be a trickier prospect,  since there are some plot-crucial elements in the dialogue sections (more in Act I than Act II - particularly the bits with Rocco, "Fidelio" and Marzelline).  Of course, a production for tv/dvd could get around these quite simply.   Alternatively - although it's a practice I'd fight shy of normally - if you were working in translation anyhow, you could "cover" the missing dialogue elements with a clever translation.

It's a piece I've been wanting to revisit for years now - I did an ENO Touring Workshop version (a sort-of collaboration with Opera Factory) in about 1986 (Maria Moll or Hillary Western/Hugh Hetherington/Richard Bainbridge/Omar Ebrahim/Richard Suart/Gloria Crane, Mus Dir Helen Robertson-Barker) and I'm still hoping to return to the "interactive/promenade" production style for the complete work Smiley

BTW, does GG (or anyone else) remember the iconoclastic Joachim Herz production at ENO?  What most people seem to remember was the enormous transparent scrim that came down over the final scene with the signature "Louis van Beethoven" stretching from one side of the stage to the other Wink

Quote from: richard barrett on 13:09:00, 11-09-2008
Carlos Kleiber's magnificent recording uses actors for the dialogue and singers for the music ("you can't do that on stage" as someone once said), which works brilliantly except in so far as little attempt was made to match the voices to one another.

First full-price opera box I ever bought, I think?  Smiley  Truly superb - if only I had a record deck to play it on these days Smiley
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
Lobby
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« Reply #47 on: 09:57:07, 12-09-2008 »
The Barenboim recording of Fidelio with Domingo and Waltraud Meier removed all the dialogue and replaces this with a narration by Leonore in which she looks back on the events depicted in the opera, so that the musical numbers act like flash-backs in a film.

Its an interesting idea, but really doesn't work.  I know that much of the dialogue is clunky and there have been several attempts over the years to replace it with either different dialogue or other solutions, but to my ears, all these attempted solutions have been significantly worse than what they are trying to replace.

I think there is a simplicity about the text which actually works well with Beethoven's music.  I was brought up with Klemperer's recording and I find the dialogue to be an integral part of the success of that recording.  I always find the determination in Christa Ludwig's voice as she exclaims "Ich habe mut und kraft" to be as moving and inspiring as her singing of Abscheulicher.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #48 on: 12:04:07, 12-09-2008 »
Quote from: Lobby on 09:57:07, 12-09-2008
The Barenboim recording of Fidelio with Domingo and Waltraud Meier removed all the dialogue and replaces this with a narration by Leonore in which she looks back on the events depicted in the opera, so that the musical numbers act like flash-backs in a film.

I think you can get away with this on a recording - in the same way that you can present the musical numbers only, entirely shorn of the dialogue.

What happens in opera-houses, however, might be rather different Wink
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
duncan
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« Reply #49 on: 20:16:45, 12-09-2008 »
Quote from: Reiner Torheit on 21:37:34, 10-09-2008
 Is it too "lefty" for the "New World Orderers" in charge of today's world?

It doesn't seem to have put off Glyndebourne, perhaps their Masters of the Universe feel sufficiently secure to indulge lefties occasionally.  The Deborah Warner production's wire-cages felt rather post-Guantanamo when I saw the revival a couple of years ago, although it actually dates from 2001. 

Review.
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Swan_Knight
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« Reply #50 on: 22:32:38, 12-09-2008 »
It's not sufficiently dramatic to qualify as an opera, I'd say: it has more in common with an oratorio.

Yes, the Left does seem to love this opera, though the tyranny in question could easily be a left-wing tyranny.  Although the music is frequently lovely (and, as is usually the case with Beethoven, I find that Klemperer does it best), there is something faintly priggish and pious about the story and the libretto that turns me right off.
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...so flatterten lachend die Locken....
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