Whatever the question, one answer, in Tobias Kratzer’s production of Fidelio, revived by the Royal Opera, is a horse. Large, black and friskily beautiful – the ideal decoy, say, to a not quite convincingly sung aria – he was led off stage, mercifully, after a few expensive and nerve-racking minutes. Add in live videos, a rejigged version of the story, new dialogue and a visual leap from Revolutionary France, in Act 1, to the present day for Act 2, and you get it: Kratzer sees Beethoven’s only opera as a mighty problem that needs solving. He hurls everything at it, turns up the houselights and incriminates each one of us in humanity’s quest for liberté, égalité, fraternité. Fair enough. Amid the squall of ideas or, were you feeling ungracious, “ideas”, there are insights. New in 2020, designed by Rainer Sellmaier, lighting by Michael Bauer, the run was interrupted by the pandemic. The revival diector is Anja Kühnhold.
No one would pretend the work is without difficulties. For some, this parable of loyalty, bravery and the love of a faithful wife proves naive and cloying. Beethoven wrestled with its composition. That struggle, from darkness to light, harmonically and dramatically, is both its essence and its reward. If the cast was uneven, there were excellent performances where it mattered: specifically, Jennifer Davis, exemplary in the fiendishly taxing, high-lying title role of Fidelio/Leonore (referred to in the business, I’m told, as a “larynx-ripper”), and Peter Rose a richly sympathetic Rocco. Eric Cutler was effective as a hairy, John the Baptist-style Florestan whose indignities included imprisonment on what appeared to be a desiccated dung heap. Christina Gansch (Marzelline) and Michael Gibson (Jacquino) were outstanding in their supporting roles, here somewhat fleshed out by Kratzer.
