The production of Fidelio which opened on 27th May in London comes from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, where it was first seen in 2000. Last night, 5th June, had the added irony of being performed on the day President Putin presented Alexander Solzhenitsyn with one of highest awards in Russia: ironic because Solzhenitzyn's portrayals of prisoners in the Gulag in such works One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, deal with the injustices of imprisonment and the erosion of human rights that lie at the heart of Fidelio .
      The producer J¸rgen Flimm, who was appointed Director of the Salzburg Festival in 2006, chose a naturalistic setting and up-dated the action to ësometime in the present' in some dictator state. It was a pity Covent Garden did not go one stage further and make the setting explicitly Guantanamo Bay with Don Pizarro some homeland security officer (though who could play Don Fernando? Gore Vidal?). Of course, there are many tyrannies in the world - Burma might suit, or Zimbabwe. But they are distant, whereas closer to home might have been more consistent with the impact Fidelio was supposed to have.
      Beethoven modelled his opera (originally Leonore, 1805) on French rescue operas, which were the operas "de jour" at the time, with the Parisian Reign of Terror a very recent memory. Inspired by Cherubini's Les Deux JournÈes, about the escape of fugitive aristocrats from the vigilance of Cardinal Mazarin, and adapting his plot from LÈonore ou L'Amour conjugal (1798) by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, (based on a true story), Beethoven intended his opera (libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner, Stephan von Breuning and Georg Treitschke) to be about the concerns of the day expressed in his increasingly radical musical language. A good test for a Fidelio production is whether you leave singing the tunes or clenching your fist. The latter is closer to the spirit of Beethoven.
      So how did J¸rgen Flimm's production measure up? Quite well, but not that well. The prison-setting was all-purpose, having at various stages a yard with work tables, a dungeon with suitcases (was that a holocaust allusion?) and a rather bland final scene with prisoners re-united with girl friends (sigh and coo! And isn't that too shallow for the Leonora/Florestan duo?) presided over by guards in a watch-tower armed to the teeth standing around, for some reason, a half-finished horse-statue. Was this a reference to a Trojan horse (if so, why, unless that is an image of Leonora) or a statue that was to be erected in honour of Don Pizarro, who has now fallen from grace? It was anyone's guess. Maybe they had one around and wanted to fill a gap in the scenery.
       However, the lack of a clear and well-conceived production made the overall impression rather bland. In the prologue to John Gay's Beggar's Opera the Beggar says: "...I have a Prison-Scene, which the Ladies always reckon charmingly pathetic." Of course, Gay's sharp satire is to expose the superficiality of the ladies' appreciation of what they see. Similarly in Covent Garden, the prison-scene was charmingly pathetic, but failed, I think, to have the impassioned impact it should have. Even the dungeon scene, where Leonora finds, and rescues, Florestan by, as Lytton Strachey once said," interposing her body" between Don Pizarro and her husband was rather lacklustre (and not just because the lights were low) until the great moment, when she whips her pistol from the holster and announces on a top B flat that she is Florestan's wife. That moment struck home, but then it always does. Even thinking about it sends shivers down the spine, so it is a moment that is both performer- and producer-proof.
      What the production failed to convey was the menace, fear and claustrophobia. It should suggest the daily compromises that Rocco has to make between cringing obedience to Don Fernando and his natural humanity and sense of justice. He lives in fear. Money, as his famous "Gold" aria, at least helps: something concrete to hang on to. Leonora should present a mixture of courage and terror. At any moment she could be discovered and her venture result in both Florestan's and her deaths. Of course, even though the opera is based on a true story, it is quite hard to believe Leonora might have got away with it, bearing in mind Ogden Nash's famous lines on her

Oh my pretty darling

You do look so entrancing

When you are advancing.

But, oh my pretty sweeting

Have you seen yourself retreating?

So much more is the need for Leonora to become a symbolic figure, above what she looks like or the improbability of the story. In this respect Karita Mattila (Leonora) proved Ogden Nash wrong. But in terms of terror and menace she conveyed little. She went through the motions, but in the rather bland setting she never managed to rise beyond it. Even her well-sung "Abscheulicher" sounded more like a slap on wrist than a punch in the face.
      One role was magnificently characterized, largely because it was the best sung: Florestan by Endrik Wottrich (making his very welcome Covent Garden dÈbut). From the back of the darkened stage at the beginning of Act 2 he managed magnificently to convey his desperation and sehnsucht lifted only by his vision of the "Engel Leonora". Wottrich transformed the routine into the remarkable, and from that moment the production took on a new life.
      It is always difficult to make Singspiele convincing. The shift between spoken words and singing can make both seem too ëstagey', too artificial. What is needed is pace, which Antonio Pappano, the conductor, did not achieve, at any rate in the first act. By shaping every phrase into a beautiful curve, the progress of the action seemed slowed down. He did not manage to capture the sense of relentlessness that pervaded performances by Otto Klemperer, for instance, who on occasions could be even slower than Pappano. Pappano seemed too nice, too polite, too careful about phrasing and not enough about meaning. It has also to be said that the orchestra's ensemble was not perfect nor their liaison with the stage. Were they under-rehearsed?. The tightness of the music and its pacing is a vital ingredient in conveying the necessary menace, terror and claustrophobia. This was too little in evidence especially in the first act.
      The sub-plot of the love triangle of Jaquino (Robert Murray), Marzelline (Ailish Tynan) and Leonore had no dramatic sparkle, not least because neither Robert Murray nor Ailish Tynan seemed to be able to make their voices work for their characterizations. They were both stiff on stage drawing their movements and attitudes from a book of clichÈs, and vocally neither really shone. In the end it was hard to be concerned about their tiffs and troubles, and to be sympathize with their fate at the end, even though some business was made of Marzelline's losing her wedding crown. Was its being thrown on the ground a symbol both of her losing Fidelio and of her lost innocence? Was the idea of a lesbian love-affair so abhorrent? It would certainly have added zest to her dull life as portrayed by Tynan!
      The complex character of Rocco, sung by Eric Halfverson, was in part convincing. Though the ambivalence of his paternal wisdom about the security of gold, set against his terror of Don Pizarro never really became established. His forgiveness at the end seemed unnecessary as he was so nice, whereas it should always seem touch and go. Once again, both vocally and dramatically he was too bland, though sang nicely.
      Robert Lloyd's Don Fernando and Terje Stenswold's Don Pizarro were respectively commanding and menacing in the right measure. Both were vocally strong and both stood still on the stage much of the time, which was to their credit here.
      This review reads negatively, but it's more disappointed than hostile. Fidelio should be a great experience. It should burn off the score onto the stage and thence into the audience. It should be a recipe for indignation, even outrage. Yet, except at moments it was none of these. It was a nice evening in the theatre with some agreeable singing and a realistic enough set and production for the audience to know what was going on. Musically, the performance had passion and care, but no real insight, except in brief but shining moments.
Roderick Swanston