Karen Almond

Beethoven’s only opera, composed and twice revised as Napoleon swept across Europe, remains the only example of the “rescue opera” in the standard repertoire, a genre that owes much to the post-aristocratic, republican idealism of the French Revolution. Its heroine Leonore disguises herself as a boy and takes the name “Fidelio,” embedding herself among the prison’s staff to rescue her husband Florestan, a political prisoner, unjustly and illegally held by Don Pizarro. In the end, her courage, steadfastness, and virtue see husband and wife delivered from their predicament and tyranny cast down to the rejoicing of all. It is the Liberal opera, par excellence.

The libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner is sparse enough in its setting and characterizations to suit every generation’s needs. The suffering Florestan can be your Gramsci or Navalny; Don Pizarro’s prison your Dachau or Sednaya. And who is Don Pizzaro but every other despot from then and now who has wielded human suffering as a means of advancement? Through it all there is Beethoven’s score: righteous, ennobling, and heartbreaking in its tenderness and optimism. It falls on both the director and conductor, then, to make this relevance rousing, transforming it into genuine inspiration for its audience. The current run of Fidelio at The Metropolitan Opera was partially successful in executing this transformation.

This fifth revival of Jürgen Flimm’s production was originally scheduled for the canceled 2020 – 2021 season to correspond with the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Directed here by Gina Lapinski, the production finds itself contending with an even sorrier state of things than it did when it debuted in the Fall of 2000. Sets by Robert Israel and costumes by Florence von Gerkan transverse the midcentury; the guards’ rifles and the prisoners’ bright, white uniforms suggest the Jim Crow South while the heap of shoes in Florestan’s dungeon recall Nazi concentration camps.

Throughout the first Act, the production makes clear the unsettling permeability between the opera’s domestic and the carceral spaces. Jacquino proposes marriage to his erstwhile sweetheart as they polish armaments. Prisoners’ arms dangle out of their cells, accepting bread from Marzelline as she blithely dreams of “ruhe stiller Häuslichkeit” with Fidelio and applauding Rocco after his spiel about establishing a sufficient nest egg before marriage. The uneasy coexistence between these two spaces, delineated by the flowerpots leading to Rocco’s door, adds a potent charge to much of the first Act, reflecting the pervasiveness of apathy amid injustice.

The staging of the dungeon sequence is frustratingly literal, as Florestan’s ecstatic vision of light flooding into his grave is explained away by Leonore opening his cell door above. Much of the dialogue in this scene has been condensed, rearranged, or excised entirely. Florestan does not beg for water, nor does he have a brief flash of recognition upon seeing the face of his jailor’s assistant; these changes, along with most of the principals’ understated delivery, made the scene more efficient yet betrayed an overall distrust of melodrama. In my view, these are not mawkish moments but necessary entry points through which the audience deepens their emotional connection with the prisoner and his plight.

In the final scene, the dungeon’s darkness makes way for a technicolor blue sky, and ladies in their Driving Miss Daisy-best chase Don Pizarro off with daggers in their gloved hands. The prisoners and townsfolk boogie as the guards hoist the bloodied former warden upon his equestrian statue and Marzelline tearily strews roses. Kitsch comes up against the messiness of regime change. We are neither fully redeemed, nor are we fully implicated.

Karen Almond

Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki made her long-awaited return to the Met after leading The Rake’s Progress in 2022. On opening night, the duration of her absence was audible. She coaxed a mighty sound from The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at the expense of clear dynamic contrast between the piece’s lighter, comic moments and its quasi-symphonic passages.

Indeed, her angular approach to the anxious pulsations coursing through Marzelline’s “O wär ich schon mit dir vereint” threatened to overwhelm the delicacy of the vocal line. There were persistent coordination issues between the pit and the singers in many of the arias, and there were moments where they appeared to be operating off different tempos. The overall lack of finesse suggested a limited rehearsal window. Mälkki will no doubt be in finer (and more rehearsed) form when she returns next spring for Innocence, another Saariaho premiere for the company.

The evening’s main source of inspiration was soprano Lise Davidsen as Leonore, making her final stage appearances before her maternity leave. Though visibly pregnant, Davidsen handled the intricacies of the blocking without any noticeable adjustments, clambering up and down the cell block walls and the ladder leading to the dungeon. Vocally, she was just as impressive. Her soprano was secure and scorching in the roles’ higher reaches, which served her well throughout “Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin?”

There was a velvety warmth to the “Komm, Hoffnung” section of the same aria, revealing kaleidoscopic tones even as she hovered at a piano. And her ascent up to its final B was genuinely exciting. Elsewhere, she brought a moving tenderness in Act II’s “O namenlose Freude.” There has been much discussion over Davidsen’s acting abilities, or lack thereof. Certainly, she is comfortable with this role’s dramatic demands, and it showed. Her sheepishness as Fidelio was amusing, and her moments of righteousness read as true.

The challenges of singing Florestan are many; beyond the difficulty of his music, the audience spends much of the first Act awaiting news of him, so when he does arrive, expectations are high. As Florestan, British tenor David Butt Phillip, in his first leading role here, did not meet those expectations. He showed that he has the volume to fill the Met, but not much else. For all his tenor’s heft, its lack of brightness lessens its impact. His opening crescendo in “Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!” was well-controlled, but few of his succeeding phrases did much to convey Florestan’s grief or faith or bring out the nuances that make this aria so affecting. I am, perhaps, too accustomed to the Jonas Kaufmann school of trembling, traumatized Florestans, but I found Butt Phillip’s portrayal to be rather blank.

With this performance, German bass René Pape as Rocco broke himself out of a doghouse of his own homophobic making, if the audience’s enthusiastic reception was any indicator. But for a few pale low notes, his instrument remains formidable, and his colorful, meticulous handling of the text made for a jocular “Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben.”

Karen Almond

Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny relished Don Pizarro’s maliciousness, stomping around the stage and snarling his way through “Ha, welch ein Augenblick.” His steel-edged sound further added to the character’s grotesqueness. Danish bass Stephen Milling was a dignified Don Fernando, even if his voice was not quite as potent as Pape and Konieczny’s.

Chinese soprano Ying Fang was utterly charming and convincing as the oblivious Marzelline. Her light, gleaming top and creamy middle range unfurled across her aria. Her and Davidsen’s sopranos wove in and out of each other’s in the opening bars of “Mir ist so wunderbar” like alternating gold and silver links in a chain. Magnus Dietrich made a successful Met debut as Jaquino. His appealing tenor contrasted nicely with his character’s simmering rage. Lindemann Young Artist Jonghyun Park and Jeongcheol Cha brought supple, rounded sounds to the roles of First and Second Prisoners, respectively.

Led by Chorus Director Tilman Michael, the Metropolitan Opera Chorus supplied gravity and pathos to “O welche lust,” the Prisoners’ Chorus, even if some of the consonant cut-offs were not as clean as one would like. The final chorus was ecstatic and stirring, awakening the animating effects of Beethoven’s score.