Beethoven added sounds

Fidelio seems to be not one of the favorite operas of Salzburg. The first half a century of the festival, it was often put by it, while the last performance passed 17 years ago. However, this summer you can’t get tickets for Beethoven.

Otherwise, the situation looked at the premiere of 1805, when Fidelio was also called Leonora: the halls were empty. The statement of unsuccessful premiere is usually limited, hinting at the negligence of contemporaries. But the story consists of details. Napoleonic troops had just occupied Vienna, aristocrats and philanthropists left the capital. The French officers, who made the majority in the auditorium, did not understand either music or the libretto. The Beethoven viewer was simply not in the city.

In order for the audience to be enthusiastic, and Wagner declared Fidelio the beginning of the German musical drama, it will take nine years of labor, a new name, three new overtures and two editions of the opera itself. There are three of them in total. Director Klaus Gut decided to create the fourth.

He excluded dialogs from the opera, replacing them with various noises. Either the airplane will ram off, then the wind will begin to howl, then the breath of Jonas Kaufman is simply heard (he sings Florestan). Sounds only at first may seem outsiders, and then the spectator is ready to perceive the torn of the phone from the neighbor as part of the general idea. As a result, they largely create an atmosphere of performance with its sense of anxiety, uncertainty and instability. Everyone is nervous for various occasions. Leonora (Adrian Pechenka) - will she be able to free her husband Florethan. Don Pisarro (Tomash is conical) - whether he will have time to kill Floretan. Rocco (Hans-Peter König)-whether he will be forced to become a killer. And the shadow of Leonora (Nadi Kichler has no words, after the main character she explains something in the language of the deaf-mute)-probably because she does not know if everything is clear to the viewer.

The new sounds for Fidelio were created by Berlinnets Torsten Ottersberg, known, in particular, projects in Carnegie Hall and the Hermitage (in the Salzburg performance, the software of the Ircam Paris Institute created by Pierre Boulez was used). The Beethoven opera is his fifth joint work with the Gut, this is a rare case when a specialist in the sound design can be mentioned along with the conductor.

As for the conductor Franz Velzer-Mest, he can bring Fidelio a list of his highest achievements. The third of the overtures written by Beethoven, according to the Maleovian tradition, plays between the two scenes of the second act. It plays it as if it were the final of the ninth, the last fight of humanity for freedom. He is quick, energetic and is not very similar to the usual, fresh and boring. The audience is inspired, after the overture in the middle of the act in the hall includes light, the musicians get up, the conductor turns twice to meet the applause face to face.

The artist Christian Schmidt and the artist Olaf Freze threw all his talents on the game with the human shadow. In the center of the vast space of the scene with white walls, a black cube stands. He moves, moves the shadows of the heroes. The shadows live an independent life and do not always repeat the movements of their owners. Unfortunately, several beautiful mise -en -scenes do not yet make a performance, the cold does not disappear from the abundance of light. Beethoven was little excited by the interests of the primadonns and the fascination of the plot, he understood the opera as the life of ideas that he gave a art form. The choice of directors in favor of the abstract kills emotions, in themselves fidelity and freedom are no more than the words that mean them. Most of the “Fidelio” time in the Gut version seems to be a very static work, and the Wacchian scene of liberation and enlightenment, which looks like a feast after the plague, as if borrowed from another opera.

When a barefoot kaufman appears on the stage-the image of a suffering prisoner to his face-everything somehow changes. It is immediately obvious that we have not only a great singer, but also an excellent actor: it is not for nothing that he has been singing Florethan for 13 years. It is only a pity that more than an hour has to wait for it: in the first act, Kaufman has no music, and it was apparently considered an unacceptable luxury to release it as an actor of Mimans.

Apparently, the only director allowed him to remain faithful to the realistic image, the role of the rest-some kind of textbook of abstract feelings. It’s impossible with Kaufman otherwise, he is still the main tenor of our days, the heir to Domingo. From his fans who could not buy tickets, the President of the Helga Rable-Stadler festival received angry, if not-evil, Mails: in popularity, Fidelio competed before the premiere with the "Troubled" of Hermanis-Netrebko.

Nevertheless, at the premiere, they say that the directors were desperately buckled.

The opera is aware of himself as a genre that is still capable of experiments. The rejection of dialogs is not a radical gesture, but the rejection of the word in favor of sounds is impressive: communication is not limited by speech, the lexical reserves of the richer dictionary. To translate the dialogue into the world of a barely audible, barely identified rustle, the sound of bells and a quiet grinding means opening a new space. Maybe it is not connected either with freedom or with marital fidelity, but remains the Beethoven in essence. Unless, of course, you do not try to reduce Fidelio to the libretto, and the theater to the repetition of the passed.

The Salzburg performance delays into parts: idea, light, sounds, voices. Write at least a dissertation about each, but only about each separately. In the final, the Kaufman Floretan looks a loner, a stranger at this holiday of life. He is released, but, it seems, everyone around rejoice in something of his own, not directly related to him.

Classic is like Floretan: it is everywhere and always alien. Interpretations will allow her to remain in the visibility zone, Klaus Gut is an outstanding master in this matter. His festival “Don Juan” of seven years ago, where the action was unfolded in a gloomy forest, is remembered for a long time, like the “Messiah” of Handel in the theater of the Academy of Sciences of the Academy of Sciences, a model of how the music is visualized. Fadelio will also be remembered: the shadows have not grown together with the characters.