CHAN 3123(2) CHAN 3123(2) Fidelio Beethoven CHAN 3123 BOOK.Qxd 12/9/06 4:24 Pm Page 2
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CHAN 3123Cover.qxd12/9/064:26pmPage1 CHAN 3123(2) Beethoven Fidelio CHAN 3123(2) CHAN 3123 BOOK.qxd 12/9/06 4:24 pm Page 2 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Fidelio Opera in two acts Libretto by Joseph von Sonnleithner, with revisions by Stephan von Breuning and © Lebrecht Music & Music © Lebrecht Arts Library Photo Georg Treitschke, after Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal English translation by David Pountney Rocco, jailer .......................................................................................................Robert Lloyd bass Marzellina, his daughter .............................................................................Rebecca Evans soprano Jaquino, Rocco’s assistant....................................................................................Peter Wedd tenor Don Pizarro, prison governor ...............................................................Pavlo Hunka bass-baritone Don Fernando, minister and Spanish nobleman ......................................Christopher Purves bass Florestan, a prisoner.................................................................................Richard Margison tenor Leonora, his wife, and assistant to Rocco, under the name of Fidelio.....Christine Brewer soprano First prisoner.................................................................................................Ashley Catling tenor Second prisoner .......................................................................................Christopher Purves bass Philharmonia Orchestra Geoffrey Mitchell Choir Matthew Rowe associate chorus master David Parry Ludwig van Beethoven 3 CHAN 3123 BOOK.qxd 12/9/06 4:24 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Time Page 1 Overture 6:31 [p. 92] 12 Dialogue: ‘But Marzellina…’ 0:45 [p. 101] Jaquino, Marzellina, Rocco, Leonora Act I 13 No. 10 Finale: ‘Oh, what delight to breathe the air’ 7:38 [p. 102] Scene 1 Chorus, First prisoner, Second prisoner 2 No. 1 Duet: ‘These people could drive you berserk’ 4:55 [p. 92] 14 ‘What did he say?’ 2:20 [p. 103] Jaquino, Marzellina, Rocco Leonora, Rocco 3 No. 2 Aria: ‘If only we could marry today’ 4:31 [p. 94] 15 ‘Let’s down to work, for time is pressing’ 2:36 [p. 104] Marzellina, Rocco, Leonora Rocco, Leonora 4 No. 3 Quartet: ‘A wonder, clear and pure’ 4:34 [p. 95] 16 ‘Oh, father, do be quick!’ 0:41 [p. 104] Marzellina, Leonora, Rocco, Jaquino Marzellina, Rocco, Jaquino, Leonora 5 No. 4 Aria: ‘If you don’t save up your money’ 3:35 [p. 96] 17 ‘Presumptuous idiot, who are you to take such a liberty’ 1:43 [p. 105] Rocco, Leonora, Marzellina Pizarro, Rocco 6 No. 5 Trio: ‘Good, that’s the stuff!…’ 5:51 [p. 97] 18 ‘Farewell, the warm and radiant light’ 4:19 [p. 106] Rocco, Leonora, Marzellina Chorus of prisoners, Marzellina, Leonora, Jaquino, Pizarro, Rocco TT 67:40 Scene 2 7 No. 6 March – COMPACT DISC TWO Dialogue: ‘This handwriting seems familiar’ 1:45 [p. 99] Act II Pizarro Scene 1 8 No. 7 Aria with choir: ‘Ah! This is ecstasy!’ 3:24 [p. 99] 1 No. 11 Introduction and Aria: Introduction 3:14 [p. 106] Pizarro, Chorus of sentries 2 Aria: ‘God! The darkest hours’ 1:51 [p. 106] 9 No. 8 Duet: ‘Now, Warder, listen!’ 5:20 [p. 100] 3 ‘In the spring of youthful promise’ 4:52 [p. 107] Pizarro, Rocco Florestan 10 No. 9 Recitative and Aria: ‘Vile murderer! Sadistic swine!’ 1:56 [p. 101] 4 No. 12 Melodrama and Duet: ‘How cold it is in these dungeons’ 1:51 [p. 107] 11 ‘Come hope, you faint and distant star’ 5:12 [p. 101] Leonora, Rocco Leonora 4 5 CHAN 3123 BOOK.qxd 12/9/06 4:24 pm Page 6 In Beethoven’s great opera we see the victory of hope, feminine courage and Time Page 5 ‘Now bend your back, let’s see you working’ 5:00 [p. 108] perseverance in the face of injustice. Rocco, Leonora, Florestan I am delighted to add this masterpiece 6 No. 13 Trio: ‘In a better world, they surely shall applaud you’ 6:13 [p. 109] Florestan, Rocco, Leonora, Pizarro to our Opera in English catalogue, 7 No. 14 Quartet: ‘You perish!’ 4:44 [p. 111] recorded by a fine cast Pizarro, Florestan, Leonora, Rocco, Jaquino 8 No. 15 Duet: ‘Oh joy beyond all understanding’ 2:48 [p. 113] led by Christine Leonora, Florestan Brewer, Richard Scene 2 Margison and 9 ‘No. 16 Finale: ‘Hear! Hear! Hear how the world wildly rejoices’ 2:03 [p. 114] Robert Lloyd. Chorus of people 10 ‘My noble sovereign’s will and order’ 4:09 [p. 114] Fernando, Chorus of people and prisoners, Rocco, Pizarro, Leonora, Marzellina 11 ‘Oh God, oh God, what ecstasy!’ 2:52 [p. 116] Chorus, Leonora, Marzellina, Florestan, Fernando, Rocco 12 ‘Let our voices tell the story’ 3:39 [p. 116] Chorus, Florestan, Leonora, Rocco, Marzellina, Jaquino, Fernando May 2005 TT 43:20 Sir Peter Moores examining an archaic Chinese bronze from the collection at Compton Verney 6 CHAN 3123 BOOK.qxd 12/9/06 4:24 pm Page 8 and Dittersdorf –, Italian opera buffa by the beginning of 1804 Beethoven had tired of The Only Opera Cimarosa and Paisiello, some Gluck and three this text, writing to a friend that Schikaneder’s Mozart operas. The influence of such works ‘empire has really been entirely eclipsed by the “Fidelio”, wrote Thomas Love Peacock at the story in which an aristocrat was rescued from on Beethoven can be heard as early as his light of the brilliant and attractive French time of the work’s first London performances, imprisonment by left-wing revolutionaries. Second (really, First) Piano Concerto, in which operas’. He was referring to both his time in combines the profoundest harmony with melody And, whereas the opera in the form in which the piano appears as a kind of vocal soloist Bonn and to the local success of Cherubini that speaks to the soul. The playfulness of (as on the present recording) it is widely amid orchestral ‘arias’ and ‘recitatives’, but, who, by the end of 1803, had had six of his youthful hope, the heroism of devoted love, the performed today appears to be as clear-cut and perhaps more importantly, in shaping his view recent operas staged in Vienna in less than two rage of the tyrant, the despair of the captive, the inevitable a piece of writing as any of that a dramatic text (be it spoken or set as years. Later to the Austrian capital came work bursting of the sunshine of liberty upon the Beethoven’s major scores, it was in fact the recitative) was an essential component of by Gaveau, Méhul and Spontini (especially gloom of the dungeon… are portrayed with a product of work put in over a period of more effective opera. Thus the operas he most La Vestale). Inspired by this new invasion, force and reality that makes music an intelligible than ten years, taking in four (nearly five) admired – and based his own first efforts Beethoven noted, ‘I have quickly had an old language, possessing an illimitable power of overtures, three musical versions and three on – were Mozart’s The Magic Flute and French libretto adapted and am now pouring forth thought in sound. substantial libretto revisions. Cherubini’s French works Lodoïska, Les Deux beginning to work on it’. This was Léonore, The story of how this ‘opera among operas’ In the then small German provincial town Journées and Médée. ou l’amour conjugal (‘Leonora, or Married (Gustav Mahler), ‘unique, alike in number and of Bonn, Beethoven’s father was a tenor, and Beethoven’s first operatic composition Love’) by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, a play with quality’ (Otto Klemperer), came about is rich the young composer-to-be soon became consisted of extra arias for an existing German extensive music, composed originally by in intriguing contradictions. It did, indeed, involved with the local Court’s theatre comic opera (Umlauf’s The Beautiful Cobbler) Pierre Gaveau. turn out to be Beethoven’s only completed orchestra, playing the cembalo for but, given his admiration for The Magic Flute Work in turning the French Léonore into a work for the lyric stage, although significant performances at the age of twelve and thirteen. and (from 1792 onward) his presence in satisfactory German Fidelio would occupy parts of his life had been involved with opera Later, following a first trip to Vienna during Vienna, it was almost inevitable that his first Beethoven intermittently for the next ten years. houses and people, and the search for suitable which he had a lesson or two from Mozart, full-scale opera project should be in tandem But his search for other librettos both during libretti. Few operas have such a clear political Beethoven returned home to the life of a with Emanuel Schikaneder, the actor/theatre- that decade and later in his career was almost bias – the victory of liberalism over unjust jobbing orchestral musician. As a rank-and-file manager who had written the book for Puccini-like in its insistence. Possible projects reactionary tyranny – or a closer identification viola player over four and a half seasons, he Mozart’s last work. Schikaneder offered him included a Macbeth by the writer for whose with a specific historical event – the fall of experienced at first-hand the contemporary Vesta’s Fire, a tale of virgins in Ancient Rome Coriolan he had written an overture, a Ruins of the Bastille in the first French Revolution of light opera repertoire: German and French who spoke (as Beethoven observed) ‘language Babylon by Treitschke (his third Fidelio 1789 – that it is a surprise to read that its works in which vocal numbers alternated with and verses such as could only proceed out of librettist-to-be), The Return of Ulysses, Romulus libretto was based loosely on a real-life rescue spoken dialogue – composers included Grétry, the mouths of our Viennese apple-women’. By and Remus and Bacchus. In the summer of 8 9 CHAN 3123 BOOK.qxd 12/9/06 4:24 pm Page 10 1811, around the time he was working on the the first Léonore – Julie-Angelique Scio – had mission to save her husband.