Conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and directed by Daniel Slater, the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert-staging of Fidelio marked the start of Belief and Beyond Belief, the Southbank Centre’s ambitious, year-long examination of the role played by the spiritual – or its absence – in our lives and culture. Beethoven’s tremendous demand that we acknowledge liberty, justice and human dignity to be inalienable, God-given rights must form an integral part of such a survey, and its meaning is, of course, of most pressing relevance now. The evening, however, had its peculiarities.
Jurowski and Slater replaced the opera’s dialogue with an uncredited “meta-narrative,” as the programme called it, delivered – badly – by Helen Ryan and Simon Williams. The central emotional tangle was summed up at the start in a single blench-inducing sentence: “A man loves a woman, who loves a man who is a woman, who loves a man.” What followed was a rambling mix of quasi-philosophy and psychobabble about “hope, our action-source,” replete with phrases like “as Stendhal said,” and “says Tertullian”. Florestan is at one point “trapped in the dark womb of despair.” Pizarro, compared at various times with Napoleon, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and Eichmann, is evil, we were told, because as a boy he was “denied love,” where Beethoven suggests that the true horror of evil is that it can, in fact, be both motiveless and incomprehensible.
Slater’s production, though striking, was also not without its questionable side. Fidelio starts out as domestic drama and closes with a paean to love that has overtones of oratorio. Slater staged the first act as a rehearsal, with the performers casually dressed, and entrances and exits cued by a stage manager. There were distracting moments, above all during O Wär Ich Schon mit Dir Vereint, when Sofia Fomina’s Marzelline was upstaged by the sight of Anja Kampe’s Leonore scrambling into male attire. The second half reverted to something like the trappings of a formal concert, with the orchestra – but not the chorus, the London Voices – dressed in conventional black, and Kampe reappearing in diva spangles for the final scene.
Conducting, playing and singing, however, were all mercifully excellent. Despite his seeming distrust of the dialogue, Jurowski has an instinctive feel for the music, to which he brought passion, commitment and superb control. Kampe, a great Leonore, sang and acted with great warmth of tone and tremendous conviction: Abscheulicher was unforgettable, as was the ecstatic look on her face when she finally released Robert Dean Smith’s clarion-voiced Florestan from his fetters.
Kristinn Sigmundsson’s Rocco, meanwhile, strongly conveyed the psychological manoeuvres the man must make for the sake of survival when faced with Pavlo Hunka’s deeply creepy Pizarro. Fomina sounded exquisite: Ben Johnson was her sweet yet resentful Jaquino. The choral singing thrilled. At the end, the London Voices joined the soloists in front of the orchestra and just let rip. The effect was extraordinary – a real and overwhelming blaze of hope in dark times.
