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Allegory and Ethics in Beethoven's Fidelio

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Allegory and Ethics in Beethoven's Fidelio Document generated on 09/27/2021 7:40 p.m. Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique Allegory and Ethics in Beethoven’s Fidelio Allégorie et éthique dans le Fidelio de Beethoven Stephen Rumph Éthique, droit et musique Article abstract Ethics, Law and Music Few operas foreground ethics as clearly as Beethoven’s Fidelio. Yet the heroic Volume 11, Number 1-2, March 2010 tale of liberation from political oppression resists narrowly historical interpretations, availing itself equally to revolutionary and reactionary URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1054023ar interpretations. Allegory theory offers a new approach to the ethical meanings DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1054023ar of Fidelio. Allegory, in which characters embody moral qualities, preserved a hierarchical and theocentric view of society, in opposition to the humanistic outlook of Enlightenment mimesis. Allegory and mimesis coexist in Fidelio, See table of contents whose title character traces a lineage to the Christian morality play. This essay compares the 1805 original of Beethoven’s opera (Leonore) with the 1814 version (Fidelio), concentrating on the final scene and the character of Publisher(s) Marzelline. I argue that the 1814 version enhances the allegorical dimension, simplifying the characters and reducing moral complexities. Fidelio models the Société québécoise de recherche en musique traditional “consensus society” of pre-Revolutionary Europe, offering a vision congenial to Congress of Vienna audiences. ISSN 1480-1132 (print) 1929-7394 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Rumph, S. (2010). Allegory and Ethics in Beethoven’s Fidelio. Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique, 11(1-2), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.7202/1054023ar Tous droits réservés © Société québécoise de recherche en musique, 2010 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ ENJEUX ÉTHIQUES ET VALEURS MORALES EN HISTOIRE DE LA MUSIQUE ETHICAL STAKES AND MORAL VALUES IN MUSIC HISTORY ew operas foreground ethics as clearly as F Beethoven’s Fidelio. Set in a state prison, the opera circles about issues of crime, pun- Allegory and Ethics in ishment, and justice. The innocent Florestan, Beethoven’s Fidelio languishing in a subterranean prison cell, finds solace in his moral code: Stephen Rumph Willig duld’ich alle Schmerzen, (University of Washington) Ende schmählich meine Bahn; Süßer Trost in meinem Herzen: Meine Pflicht hab’ ich getan! I gladly bear all suffering, End my life in disgrace. The sweet comfort in my heart: I have done my duty. His faithful wife Leonore draws strength longer like slaves; far from me be tyrannical from the same pure source: oppression!”) (see Wegeler and Ries 1972, 78). Ich folg’ dem inner’n Triebe, Paul Robinson has noted the pervasive refer- Ich wanke nicht, ences to freedom in the libretto—“Freiheit”, Mich stärkt die Pflicht “frei,” “befreien,” “in freier Luft” (1996, 75-80). Der treuen Gattenliebe! Beethoven enhanced this emancipatory mes- I follow the inner urging, sage with a musical quotation from his early I do not waver. Cantata on the Death of Joseph II, played I am fortified by the duty by the solo oboe as Leonore is permitted Of true marital love. to unchain Florestan. The original words of the melody, “Da stiegen die Menschen ans The jailer Rocco faces ethical challenges less Licht” (“Then mankind ascended towards the heroically, if more humanly, as fear and greed light”), economically fuse images of enlight- 1 compete with his native compassion. enment, freedom, and human ennoblement. Ethics and politics intertwine closely in On this reading, Don Pizarro would embody Fidelio, yet the opera’s political meanings the oppressive aristocracy of the ancien prove frustratingly elusive. Composed in 1804- régime, trampling underfoot the rights of 05, reworked in 1806, and revived in its fam- man. Moreover, the emancipation of political iliar version in 1814, Fidelio spans a period of prisoners from a Staatsgefängnis cannot have radical political change, and its heroic tale of failed to awaken memories of the Bastille. John liberation from unjust oppression lends itself to Bokina has summed up this reading: “Fidelio diverse interpretations. The opera reads with is an allegory of the French Revolution, the supreme example of bourgeois republican vir- suspicious ease as an allegory of the French 1 All German translations Revolution, especially in the glow of the hero- tue” (1997, 75). are my own. I am grate- ful to Michael Tusa for ic symphony Beethoven had just dedicated to Fidelio avails itself just as easily, however, to First Consul Bonaparte. Beethoven’s alleged his valuable comments counterrevolutionary allegories. Jean-Nicholas on the draft of this words upon learning of Napoleon’s corona- Bouilly’s Léonore ou L’amour conjugal, essay. tion, “Er wird sich nun höher wie alle andern source of Beethoven’s libretto, seems to have 2 David Galliver (1981) stellen, ein Tyrann werden!” (“Now he will set been inspired by accounts of aristocratic resist- has challenged the himself above all others, become a tyrant!”), ance to the Terror.2 Bouilly was an outspoken longstanding belief that Bouilly based his echo in Don Fernando’s magnanimous decree: royalist, as was his collaborator Pierre Gaveaux “Nein, nicht länger kniet sklavisch nieder,/ libretto upon a single who composed the song “Le Réveil du peuple,” incident from the Tyrannenstrenge sei mir fern!” (“No, kneel no Terror. LES CAHIERS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ QUÉBÉCOISE DE RECHERCHE EN MUSIQUE, VOL. 11, NOS 1-2 47 an anti-Jacobin riposte to the “Marseillaise”. with the progressive widening of middle- As David Charlton has pointed out, Léonore class materialist values. (1964, 237-238) premiered in the Théâtre Feydeau, an “ultra- As Jane Brown argued in a recent book, this royalist institution” whose elite Italian fare ideological shift correlated with the ascend- distinguished it from the Opéra-Comique (in ancy of a mimetic aesthetic: Robinson 1996, 62). A review of the 1798 premiere, quoted by Charlton, explicitly iden- The older, allegorical mode of represen- tifies Florestan’s sufferings with “the tyranny tation, in which the supernatural was of fifteen months, of which we were victims” rendered visible, was less suited to the Enlightenment’s internalized grounding (in Robinson 1996, 67). For post-Thermidorian of significance, and gradually gave way audiences, Don Pizarro would more likely to more mimetic modes of representa- have evoked Robespierre and the Committee tion, in which nature and material objects of Public Safety than aristocratic elites. In May represented themselves, not aspects of of 1814, amidst preparations for the Congress an invisible supernatural order. Instead of of Vienna, the same character might well have representing some function of the soul as reminded Viennese audiences of Napoleon, conceived by the church, dramatic charac- another monster tossed up by the Revolution. ters came to represent particular human According to Lewis Lockwood: “The Fidelio of beings. (2007, 7) 1814 is now generally regarded as a glorifica- Yet, as Brown demonstrated, the allegor- tion of contemporary political authority at a ical tradition of the medieval and Renaissance time when the balance of power in Europe morality play did not instantly succumb to was palpably shifting toward the restoration of Enlightenment mimesis, but maintained a the monarchies” (2005, 473). dialogic presence well into the eighteenth As a political allegory, then, Fidelio would century. Interestingly, Brown found a locus seem to float free of narrowly historical inter- classicus of residual allegory in Beethoven’s pretations, supporting diametrically opposed favorite Mozart opera, Die Zauberflöte, whose readings. Yet if we concentrate not on what influence can be heard throughout Fidelio (see Fidelio means, but rather on how it produces Brown 1996, 142-156).3 those meanings, a less ambiguous picture The ideological entailments of allegory comes into focus. Allegory itself, a mode of appear clearly in the work of the Nazarene representation in which human characters painters, Viennese contemporaries embody virtues, vices, or archetypal figures, of Beethoven. In 1809, a year marked by carries its own political and ethical implica- Napoleon’s defeat of Austria and second occu- tions. As Angus Fletcher demonstrated in a pation of Vienna, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, classic study, allegory reinforced a hierarchical Franz Pforr, and four other students from the outlook that subordinated the visible world to Viennese Academy formed the Lukasbund. an invisible metaphysical realm: They rejected French neoclassicism and dedi- The mode is hierarchical in essence, owing cated themselves to a “New-German, religious- not only to its use of traditional imageries patriotic art.” Swept up by the wave of roman- which are arranged in systems of “corres- tic Catholicism, the Nazarenes decamped pondences,” but furthermore because all for a Roman monastery and sought spiritual hierarchies imply a chain of command, of order in the secondary sense that is meant regeneration
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