Beethoven - Fidelio (Dublin, 2021)

Ludwig van Beethoven - Fidelio

Irish National Opera, 2021

Fergus Sheil, Annabelle Comyn, Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Robert Murray, Daniel Sumegi, Brian Mulligan, Kelli-Ann Masterson, Dean Power, David Howes, Jacek Wislocki, Matthew Mannion

The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin - 7th November 2021

Fidelio is very much an opera shaped by the time in which it was written and the difficulties the composer had in bringing it to the stage. The composition of Beethoven's only opera was a notoriously long and difficult process, going through several different versions and an ignominious debut in 1805 that was considered a failure. Little of those initial problems are evident now in whichever version is produced, whether as Fidelio or its earlier incarnation as Leonore. Its reputation as an opera relies on it being Beethoven's only opera to some extent, which is no small matter of course, but there are indisputably greater qualities evident in the work's themes. Those themes are related to the period when Vienna was occupied by French forces, but they can still have powerful resonance and meaning today if you can get over some of the work's problems. I don't think the Irish National Opera were entirely able to do that in their current production.

Fidelio is purest Beethoven, a composition that rates with the very best of his work, but the operatic conventions do age the work somewhat, and as opera was clearly not somewhere the composer was entirely comfortable, it doesn't really strike out any new or original ground. The libretto, one of the main problems with the composition that needing continuous rework and revision over its development, has some opera-comique elements and dry recitative that don't sit well alongside the rather more serious main subject, which is that of a story inspired by French Revolutionary ideals of a prisoner being held captive in secret and treated horrifically in captivity without trial.

There are ways to bring these two stories together. Evidently they are connected in the fact that the main character Fidelio - who is the object of the prison warder's daughter Marzelline's attentions, and consequently the love rival of Jaquino - is actually a woman, Leonore, the wife of the prisoner Florestan. She is seeking to find and rescue her husband from the prison, despite his existence and presence there not being recognised, as he is being kept there is secret as an act of personal revenge by Don Pizarro. With word of the prison governor due to visit, Pizarro wants to cover up his crimes by executing the prisoner being kept in the deepest darkest dungeon, the man already practically dead from starvation.

The element that notionally holds the two parts together in its original incarnation is the theme of married love; of a wife who will go to desperate lengths to save her husband from an unjust fate for the love that lies between them. There are of course many other aspects, both political and humanistic - and even proto-feminist - that can be drawn from this situation, from the tyranny of Pizarro's injustice and the determination of Florestan to suffer the consequences of his belief in truth and freedom, but the rather domestic and conventional rescue opera situations involving a woman disguised as a man leads to some forced comedy in the opening act that really does little for the work. If this were Mozart, those themes can feed though to a more rounded character development and expression of sentiments that deepens the themes. Here in Fidelio, it just seems conventional and perfunctory. 

Or at least in as far as you can ever find anything in Beethoven conventional or perfunctory. There is much to admire even in the opening scenes of the opera, which has some beautiful arias in there amidst the rather stiff recitative and the formality of the musical arrangements and romantic complications. If there is any real purpose to the opera revealed in these scenes aside from the consideration of what is important in a marriage and what is not (and a same-sex marriage would be one thing that would never have been considered in the original), it's in the way that the opera begins to really define what is and what is not important, establishing areas of light and shade, lightness and darkness, captivity and freedom, and viewing them as two sides of the same coin. Even behind the ordinary everyday matters there can be an underlying darkness. Fidelio's great achievement is in showing how even with that, hope can still exist and not be extinguished.

There are clear references to that in several scenes of the first act, not least in the brief release of the prisoner from their dark cells to spend a moment in the sunlight and fresh air. The prisoners chorus is simply a glorious moment, the gross inhumanity of what they have endured overshadowed/enlightened by a small act of kindness that means so much. It's a beautifully expressed sentiment and it is hope that holds it together; the belief and indeed even holding onto the memory that there is something better out there, something that it is not beyond reach.

Directing the Irish National Opera production Annabelle Comyn rightly focusses on light/dark and hope as being the humanistic heart of the work and its importance is no more clearly brought out than at the start of Act II. There is a noticeable shift in Beethoven's music, the heaviness that has been gradually alluded to now becoming inescapable as we are taken to the dark depths of the cell where Florestan is being detained, bound in chains, starving to death, about to be executed. All hope is almost snuffed out and yet we see the almost dead Florestan crawl towards a thin sliver of light that somehow manages to penetrate the utter darkness of this dank hole. It's chilling and a heart soaring moment at the same time.

The greatest expression of this human ability to endure and strive to hold onto hope and the fight for truth and justice is of course in the singing. In Florestan's voice we sense that purpose and determination, much as we have already seen it to a similar extent in the bravery of his wife Leonore's actions. It's interesting that the same qualities were evident in the performance of Satyagraha that I saw in London last week, about how it becomes possible not to submit to despair when you know you have truth and right on your side. Comparing Glass with Beethoven might raise eyebrows, but the same principle applies; the meaning and its ability to reach out to an audience is expressed through the music and through the human voice much more so than the dramatic presentation.

Fortunately, Beethoven's music - long laboured over to achieve just such an effect - and the performance of it under Fergus Sheil manage to get this across superbly at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on the opening night of this production. So too did the singing, with notably fine performances from Robert Murray as Florestan and Sinéad Campbell Wallace as Leonore. Kelli-Ann Masterson also stood out as Marzelline, but all the singing performances were excellent, finding the truth to their characters situation even if the libretto, the English translation of the recitative and the delivery of it left something to be desired.

This is something that the director never managed to get to grips with. The fact that the opera was sung in German and the recitative spoken in English wasn't really a problem, that was an easy enough switch to make. The way it was delivered however was completely lacking in any naturalistic intonation and it just contributed to the early scenes feeling inauthentic and lacking any real drama or emotion. The set designs didn't particularly help. They were basic and functional in the presentation of a relatively modern prison or containment facility - a computer screen, the prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits - but there could have been much more done to make this relatable and relevant to contemporary struggles for truth, freedom and justice.

Putting aside what it wasn't or what it maybe should have been, the little touches and emphases of light and dark were enough to win over an appreciative Dublin audience to the brilliance of Fidelio as an opera and highlight the important expression of humanistic qualities within it. If the production was lacking and didn't manage to address the dialogue/acting weaknesses that remain hazardous in this particular opera, the musical performances and the singing were nonetheless of the usual high standard we have come to expect from the Irish National Opera.

Links: Irish National Opera

Synnott - Dubliners (Wexford, 2017)

Andrew Synnott - Dubliners

Opera Theatre Company, Wexford Opera Festival, 2017

Andrew Synnott, Annabelle Comyn, Emma Nash, Anna Jeffers, Andrew Gavin, David Howes, Peter O' Donohue, Cormac Lawlor

Clayton White's Hotel, Wexford - 1 November 2017

The two short stories that Andrew Synnott chooses from James Joyce's Dubliners don't strike you as being the sort of thing that operas are made of, but then again I'm sure that it would have been hard to imagine The Dead from the same short story collection being adapted into a feature film. Composer Andrew Synnott and librettist Arthur Riordan however succeed with Counterparts and The Boarding House in exactly the same way that John Huston did with The Dead; they give due attention to the fact that the forces that exist in and around the characters are far more important than the narrative itself.

These are more than just stories to be told, and they are more than just depictions of Dublin life at a certain, albeit significant time in Ireland's history at the beginning of the 20th century. There are all kinds of social and political undercurrents running around in 1914, with the Great War just around the corner and with the Republican Easter Rising not far away, but the idea of identity and change, of the times mirroring a significant moment in individuals' lives can also be found in Dubliners.

In Counterparts and The Boarding House (and indeed The Dead), events come to a point where there is no return to the past. The characters find themselves obliged to reassess their lives and try to assert some kind of authority over their own destiny, only to find that there are external forces that are beyond their ability to control or influence. The stories that make up Synnott's two short Dubliners operas are not connected and the tone and the revelations reached in each is markedly different, but Synnott's brilliantly brings out the respective commonalities, differences and qualities that lie at the heart of both works.

There's an almost impressionistic flow to both pieces, but in Counterparts it's one that is determined by the alcoholic haze and rush of emotions that course through the day of a Dublin office clerk. Farrington has already nipped out for a few quick ones during his breaks and all he can think about is getting back out to the warm happy glow of being in a pub with his friends. There are however all kinds of competing forces at work that prevent Farrington from mastering his situation, and not just in the workplace where his boss is putting pressure on him to urgently to copy documents for a contract.

Alcohol is a force, desire is a force, conceit is a force, masculinity is a force and all of them give Farrington a misplaced sense of self-worth. His bragging to his friends of his witty put-down of his boss when he asks him if he takes him for a fool ("I don't think that's a fair question to put to me") only carries so much weight, and as his money runs out, the alcohol buzz wears off and Farrington receives a few injuries to his pride, so too does his sense of humour. None of his efforts have brought him any satisfaction, and when he returns home he exerts his dwindling sense of control and authority by beating one of his children.

It's hardly the stuff of opera, but Synnott on piano with a string quartet, gives this narrative a wonderful coherence and a feeling for mood, but it only really holds together when it is played alongside and contrasted with The Boarding House. It's a story that seems even less likely to work on the stage, but Synnott's response to that is to just be even more creative with rhythms, with the overlaying of vocal lines and with a construction that wonderfully leap-frogs from one character focus to the next.

It even starts with a narrator, Jack Mooney, who lets it be known that the moment of truth is dawning for one of the guests at his mother's boarding house. Bob Doran has been carrying on with Polly who works there, and it appears that her mother Mrs Mooney has permitted the liberty to be taken or at least turned a blind eye to it; but in reality she has just been biding her time. Doran's fate is sealed before the opera even starts, but he just hasn't realised it yet. He thinks he still has a say in the outcome, but when the summons comes from Mrs Mooney, his bachelor days are effectively numbered.

The forces he has to contend with are brute force (Jack Mooney), the bonds of family, the ideas of right and wrong that are ingrained in this society by religion, and with it the irrefutable certainty that one has to pay for one's sins. The personal wishes of the individual are rendered insignificant in the face of such huge social and cultural forces, and the inevitability with which they pile up on Bob Doran, as well as the inherent humour that lies in the situation, are brilliantly brought out in this wonderfully constructed opera version of the story.

The flow of words and impressions, the flow from one character's perspective to another is brilliantly brought out in the flow of the musical score that Andrew Synnott leads from piano, but this is more than just musical accompaniment and more than an exercise in craft. Between the music, the words and the staging, the operas bring out the deeper essence and universality of these timeless stories. The gorgeous set designs by Paul O'Mahony who also worked on the OTC's gorgeous Acis and Galatea (there's a man who knows his pubs!) and Joan O'Clery's costumes retain something of the period, but Annabelle Comyn's direction ensures that the situations, experiences and the nature of the characters remains recognisable and relevant, and not just to early twentieth century "Dubliners".

The complementary nature of Counterparts and The Boarding House can also be found in the lyrical treatment and Synnott and Riordan have created wonderfully lyrical and poetic vocal lines with rhyming couplets for both pieces. Using the same cast members for the two short operas allows further connections to be drawn; not so much in characters as in their predicaments and expression of them. Cormac Lawlor however only has a singing role in Counterparts as Farrington, but it's one that evidently carries the whole tone of the piece and his timing and delivery of each of the varied moods the alcoholic clerk goes through is superb. The Boarding House has a larger number of leads from Emma Nash's Polly, Anna Jeffers's Mrs Mooney, Andrew Gavin's Bob Doran and David Howes's Jack, who all impress on an individual level, as well as giving wonderfully complementary performances.

Premiered at the 2017 Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Theatre Company's production of Andrew Synnott's Dubliners has a further three performances at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Dublin from the 9 - 11th November 2017, but I would hope and expect that this lyrical, thoughtful and entertaining work will have a longer life beyond its initial run.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Theatre Company