Fidelio

Hungarian State Opera

english | deutsch

Fidelio Ludwig van Beethoven

Virgil Horvรกth

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Ludwig van Beethoven

Fidelio

Opera in two acts, sung in German Libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner, Stephan von Breuning and Georg Friedrich Treitschke Surtitles by Máté Mesterházi

Conductor: Ádám Fischer, János Kovács Director: Balázs Kovalik Set designer: Balázs Kovalik, Angelika Höckner Costume designer: Mari Benedek Don Fernando: Gábor Bretz, Krisztián Cser Don Pizarro: Béla Perencz, István Berczelly Florestan: Thomas Moser, Mathias Schulz Leonore: Tünde Szabóki, Szilvia Rálik Fidelio: Virgil Horváth Rocco: Friedemann Kunder, Péter Fried Marzelline: Zita Váradi, Júlia Hajnóczy Jaquino: Attila Fekete, Szabolcs Brickner First prisoner: Gergely Boncsér, József Mukk Second prisoner: Kázmér Sárkány, Csaba Szegedi Chief repetiteur: Anikó Katona Chorus director: Máté Szabó Sipos Leader of the children’s chorus: Gyöngyvér Gupcsó Assistants to the director: Tibor Frigyesi, Christoph Grasse Costume maker: Jutka Beda Set maker: Zoltán Juhász, Miklós Resz Musical assistants: László Bartal, Gábor Bartinai, Erika Dallos, Miklós Harazdy, Pálma Hidegkuti, Zsolt Petheô, Tamás Salgó, Szabolcs Sándor

Synopsis

Act I The opera is set in a prison for political prisoners.

In the courtyard a woman is dreaming how happy she would be if she were with the love of her heart. She’s thinking of Fidelio, a young man who has recently been working in the prison for some time. Many of those held in captivity are the enemies of the prison governor Don Pizarro, and one of them may be Florestan, who tried publicly to expose Pizarro’s despotism and abuses.

At least this is what Florestan’s wife Leonore suspects, who in order to find her husband and rescue him has put on men’s clothing and found work in the prison. Using the name of Fidelio she has won not just the trust and respect of the gaoler Rocco, but has aroused the ardour of his daughter Marzelline as well.

Jaquino, Rocco’s assistant, is pestering Marzelline with his love for her. The girl however repeatedly repulses him and confesses that since Fidelio has appeared on the scene Jaquino has last any chance of obtaining her. Their argument stops when his “rival” appears. Fidelio has come back to the prison carrying a heavy burden of chains which have been mended. Rocco is very pleased with Fidelio’s aptitude for the job, and makes no secret of his support for Marzelline’s plan to marry. But, he says, nowadays this is not enough: good fortune just as much as emotion and power is influenced by money.

Naturally, for Fidelio-Leonore these thoughts are alarming, and before she can be unmasked by the pressing question of marriage, she asks Rocco to take her to the most strictly guarded prisoners. She will bear any burden and take any risk as long as she can find out whether her husband is kept there.

Rocco warns her that prison work hardens a man’s heart.

Don Pizarro learns that the king’s minister has found out about the prisoners being held illegally. He intends to make an unscheduled inspection and have the prison governor arrested for abuse of his position. The greatest danger for Pizarro is that he might be discovered holding Florestan prisoner. He determines to murder him, and tries to persuade Rocco to carry out his plan for him, but no matter what he offers him the gaoler is only willing to act as 4

an assistant in the horrific deed.

Overhearing the end of their conversation, Leonore determines for humanitarian reasons to save the life of the mysterious prisoner, whoever he is. Like a rainbow appearing in the dark clouds, she is filled with the hope that by standing up to this arbitrary brutality she can perform a sacrifice for her husband. Her words are followed by deeds: without permission from the governor she releases the prisoners into the sunlight.

Pizarro enters enraged and blames Rocco, who makes excuses by referring to the spring air and the name-day of the king. But the only thing that calms the wrath of his superior is when Rocco starts to talk about the prisoner who in a few hours’ time will never again see the sunlight. Pizarro decides it is better to dispense with exacting any reprisal for the audacious release of the prisoners. He orders the prisoners to go back, and urges Rocco to start work immediately on what they had talked about earlier.

Act II In the lowest and darkest cell of the dungeon we see the prisoner languishing in torment. It is Florestan. His crime had been simply to stand up for justice. His fate is to be slowly destroyed. Tortured by suffering, he sees a vision of Leonore as an angel who will soon open up the prison and lead him into the heavenly world of truth and justice.

Rocco and Fidelio arrive below ground to carry out their bargain and dig the grave before the prison governor himself comes to finish off the victim. With a shudder Leonore realizes in horror that she has dug the final resting place of her husband.

Pizarro arrives intent on murder. He is about to attack the prisoner in chains, when Leonore reveals her identity and, brandishing a pistol, springs to defend her husband.

The trumpet is heard announcing the arrival of the minister.

Eternal love triumphs in victory.

A rainbow has shone forth from the dark clouds‌

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Fidelio

Albrecht Haushofer

A dungeon. Someone who wants evil.

A man fated to die. Fighting, a woman.

A bright sound pierces the dark building, and for a breath’s length everyone is still.

In all the magic of music and stage no call reverberates with such pure echo as this imperious trumpet blast: triumph to the good, hard penance to the evil.

They climb securely up into the light, greeted by those who were in fetters, accompanied by liberating fanfares.

In life there are no tones like these.

There is only a paralyzing perseverance.

And then a hanging, a burying-in-sand.

Translated by M. Herter Norton. The geographer and writer Albrecht Haushofer (1903 – 1945) was arrested and killed by the Nazis for being one of the conspirators in the assassination attempt against Hitler on 20th July 1944. His sonnets written in the Berlin/Moabit prison were found on his body after he was executed on 23rd April 1945.

They are considered to be one of the most important artistic products of German antiNazi literature. The Moabiter Sonette [Moabit Sonnets] were published posthumously in 1946.

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Why Fidelio?

Clearly the decision of the new directorate of the Hungarian State Opera House, stamped with the names of Ádám Fischer and Balázs Kovalik, to begin with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio is a gesture of some kind. On the surface the choice fell naturally onto a work which in recent decades has not been very successful in Budapest. So allow me to ask you: why Fidelio? Ádám Fischer | Where I acquired my social awareness, in German speaking countries, Fidelio is the most popular opera. What for us is Ferenc Erkel’s Hunyadi László and Bánk bán, for them is Fidelio and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. So at the start of a new era Fidelio is ideal. Also in Germany Fidelio is just as popular as the 9th Symphony. If that’s not the case here, then we have to try to “naturalize” the work.

Balázs Kovalik | I never thought that one day I would direct it. Till now I’ve been spoiled: I could put on stage works I had chosen myself. This work, however – from the point of view of its whole structure and dramaturgy – is a problem. But that’s precisely the challenge: to solve the problem. At the same time the subject of the opera is a challenge. The desire for freedom is an eternal theme, or topos, which at the present time is not part of the political scene as it was after the Second World War or after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So the question is how important for us is the topic of freedom today in our daily lives.

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ÁF | The subject of Fidelio isn’t freedom but liberation. It presents the moment of liberation, and it’s that which makes it suitable for a celebratory occasion, and ideal as an opening work. Of course that’s not the only reason we are performing it. It’s an opera which is one of the peaks not just of music, but of the whole of human culture.

BK | We’re entitled of course to experience the moment of liberation in our daily lives, and for me the question is precisely whether we do experience it, whether we can experience it, indeed whether we want to experience it. For the characters in the opera don’t all experience liberation.

Fidelio is also your first joint enterprise. On the one side a real musician – as the Germans say a “Vollblutmusiker” – as conductor; on the other side a director ready to cram his ideas into the performances. In the light of what you have experienced so far with Fidelio how do you see this duality? ÁF | Fidelio has accompanied me throughout my career, and for me it has determined my fate. I owe to it my first international success. At the same time I experienced as a child, in my parents’ generation, a kind of operatic “Beckmesser” way of looking at the work, which says this is not the way to write for voices. Which is true if we listen like Beckmesser sitting behind a curtain marking off errors. It’s just that Fidelio is more than an opera, more than a vocal work. It is a work, and one of the greatest. It may be that it does not fulfil the realistic demands of strict academic dramaturgy, but that’s not what it aims for, it goes beyond that.

It’s this that makes it modern. In this sense I consider it important that it should be staged by a director who can separate himself from realism and deal with abstraction.

Where for example does the bourgeois world of Marzelline-Jaquino-Rocco find a place in an abstract production?

BK | In both the handling of the voices and the dramaturgy the opera has something modern about it which we can only call dilettante if we don’t acknowledge the total newness that is created by it. Because of the “unvocal” treatment of the voices the singers have horribly difficult parts to sing, as a result of which their whole concentration, their physical and emotional state, their tone production and breathing are changed and heightened, their adrenalin levels rising to the skies. If Beethoven had

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apportioned this “more sensibly”, he would never have achieved the euphoria, the “fireworks”, the feeling of liberation.

In other words he wrote such difficult vocal parts because he wanted to create something completely new in terms of musical theatre, a kind of trance-like state which nobody can escape from. On this basis I decided my task as director was not to follow through the bourgeois realist threads in the opera, or its political and ideological message. I much preferred to imagine myself in front of an avant-garde painting in which these themes, these thoughts are placed alongside each other, and the viewer is helped to interpret them on his own via subtle overtones and cross references. So as a director this is how I’d like to respond to the modern tendencies of the music.

I find it hard to imagine that a director would not be interested in Leonore’s connections with this bourgeois world, especially with Marzelline, whom – even if for lofty reasons – she is forced to deceive …

BK | The first version of Fidelio in 1805 gives Leonore much more opportunity to show us how she experiences that dishonesty. After all disguise is dishonesty. And in the process of seeking her own happiness, she destroys the happiness of another. At the same time from the human point of view another question is whether the years of severance between Leonore and Florestan didn’t cause an irreparable break in their lives. Can they still have children? Can their marriage still be happy? I want to show these questions to do with the role of Leonore by splitting her character in two: there will be a (singing) Leonore and a (silent) Fidelio. In other words Marzelline will be in love with a real man, while the soul of Leonore is portrayed by a real woman in a sort of enlarged monologue. I could say that the whole performance is a vision that Leonore has. Or that in the final analysis the avant-garde painting I mentioned is a scene forming in her mind, as Leonore’s vision.

Sometimes it is said that the 1805 version is better dramaturgically, because it “unravels the threads”… ÁF | True, but it doesn’t matter. That the “threads must be unravelled” is itself part of the expectations of realist theatre. The 1814 version by making a virtue of necessity becomes thereby modern. Because our lives are like that: we encounter human destinies and conflicts, then later lose sight of some of them…

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Even so the present production borrows something from the 1805 version.

The first act begins with Marzelline’s aria, and only after it comes the duet for Jaquino and Marzelline. Whereas in 1814 the sequence is reversed. Isn’t it a problem that now the E major overture is followed by a C minor/major aria (instead of the A major duet)? We shouldn’t forget that the 1805 version still had the Leonore overture no.2 in C major …

BK | That can only cause a problem if the aria follows immediately after the overture, and is not preceded by spoken text, as in our production. It was for this reason that I was adamant we should follow Beethoven’s earlier intention in 1805, because I feel that the yearning for happiness expressed in Marzelline’s aria carries more weight if it is heard at the beginning of the work and, along with the fulfilment of Leonore’s happiness at the end of the opera, can form a frame. By contrast if it is heard after the buffoonery of the duet for Jaquino and Marzelline, then it becomes just a young girl’s adolescent dream. In which case its C minor sadness is actually less justified.

Speaking of the overtures, Gustav Mahler’s idea that the Leonore overture no.3 should be played before the opera’s finale has been adopted by Ádám Fischer … ÁF | In my opinion this is by no means unjustified in the Budapest Opera House. To play the Leonore overture no.3 which summarizes the action during a performance of the opera is an idea which arose before Mahler’s time, since taken alone the second act is much shorter than the first. With the added overture the two acts are approximately the same length, furthermore the overture puts the emphasis in the second act more on the music drama side. I’ve conducted Fidelio many times both with and without the Leonore overture no.3. At first I didn’t like the idea, and said the “O namenlose Freude” must be followed immediately by the finale. But then I realized that what looks better on paper is worse in actual performance. In my opinion Mahler’s idea reveals how deeply he understood human nature. Because just as at the moment of liberation Leonore and Florestan remain alone in the prison, so we the listeners need to be alone with music and absorb what has happened. It contributes enormously to the intensity of the moment.

In which case I place my vote beside Mahler’s procedure. There are some works where you can’t decide which version is better. After the descent into Hell that ends the Vienna version of Don Giovanni I go home with quite a different feeling than when I conduct the Prague version with the scena

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ultima. But I can’t assume the responsibility for saying which is better. With Fidelio, though, my opinion is settled.

What can the director do with the Leonore overture no.3?

BK | Lower the curtain. Not that I disagree with what has just been said.

On the contrary, I think the finale opens on to a completely new world both musically and dramatically.

The first part of the opera, the bourgeois singspiel world in the prison courtyard, lasts until Pizarro appears. After that, it’s as though a new act begins; it even has a “prelude” in the military march. From here onwards the opera becomes in fact a political thriller. The singspiel sphere does not return musically. This drama of politics and suspense comes to an end with the trumpet signalling the arrival of the Minister and the duet where Leonore and Florestan come together. If therefore the Leonore overture no.3 is played at this point, then it sums up as a musical epilogue the realist content of the first two parts and provides a transition to the surreal third scene. This finale is simply a commentary following the epilogue, its only goal being a quarter of an hour of euphoric celebration. “A firework display” after the performance. Of course I gave a lot of thought to whether we shouldn’t do a mime here describing the fact that “nothing is what it seems”. Directors are always tempted by orchestral interludes, and I usually add some production to them. In this case, though, I feel it would be a mistake. So, as with the E-major overture, so with the Leonore overture no.3 the curtain stays down.

While the conductor will obviously conduct the music as euphorically as he can, for the director it is equally obvious that the question will arise: can we today accept without an ironic feeling the finale of Fidelio? Can we identify nowadays with this euphoria?

BK | Probably it’s impossible to get away with it entirely without some irony, but we mustn’t add to it in any way. I’ve seen a performance where the Minister was accompanied on his arrival by newspaper photographers, in other words it was impossible to like the new order, because it used the liberation itself just as propaganda. And I’ve seen a performance also where the chorus didn’t appear on the stage, instead it was situated in the orchestral pit, by which the choral sound became abstract and the spectator could pay more attention to the individual fate of the characters. Both

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of these ideas work well. I approach the finale of Fidelio from the side of naivety, which of course contains a bit of irony. Isn’t all feeling of liberation naive? Weren’t they naive to rejoice when after the siege of Budapest they came out of the cellars? A person not naive thinks at such a time − all right, but tomorrow what am I going to give my children to eat? At the moment of liberation however everyone is naive. In our production I conceive of this naivety as a rainbow-coloured vision. Since today we are not – thank God – performing this opera after some social or political catastrophe, we cannot decide who or what this rejoicing is for. Because if we did, then we would claim the work for some political cause, and there has been enough of that in the career of Fidelio. In our performance euphoria arrives, without the need for anyone feeling it belongs to them. Anyone who wants to feel that can, but he has to look within himself to find what it is he can rejoice about so much.

What does the conductor feel about that special “Augenblick”: the moment of liberation? ÁF | I can show that musically, but I cannot speak for what the audience feel. I’m too much involved in the performance as a conductor to be able to do that.

Máté Mesterházi

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On Fidelio Ernst Bloch

Nowhere else are we burned more directly.

Suffering, confused hope, the magic of peerless fidelity. In Pizarro it is the evil genius of the world himself who steps onto the stage, and sets in motion this tremendously essential play about struggle, need, about the sound of a trumpet that rips into extreme darkness, about resurrection.

From the very beginning the atmosphere is tense and electric. Already in the graceful curtain-raiser between Marzelline and Jaquino there is a restiveness, a knocking that comes not merely from the outside. Everything points to the future, even Rocco’s wariness; this music is fermenting and searching for a purpose, the pure will to be happy. At the same time, in the effort something is advanced, the distant, the true Here and Now, comes into play, as if it were here already. An “inner instinct” is churned up raging in defiance, insofar as it contains within itself the image of its goal; both possession and non-possession, just as in every love, never mind fidelity.

This “star of the weary” exists timidly and threatened, embedded in a moment of extraordinary danger – but also present solidly and utopistically at least. “Do you think I can’t see into your heart?” Rocco asks Leonore, whereupon the stage contracts into the Andante sostenuto of a song, which sings from the foreground of pure darkness that it is nothing less than “miraculous”. Marzelline says this to Leonore, who sees her rainbow and her star only in an ecstasy. In the self-containment of the quartet this distant goal shone glowing quietly, but in Leonore’s great aria, in the Prisoners’ Chorus, in Florestan’s fevered ecstasy, it shines keen and bright; not only

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like a rainbow, but like the incomparable light of a vision, rising to an unbelievable final cadence. What is more, the Utopian time of the present, against the background of which Fidelio as a whole takes place, appears in even greater depth. It is like a curious enchantment, a moment, in which it is precisely the “moment”, the height of life at its most intense that seizes hold of itself, and in which the frenzied music, as it were, slams into itself vertically, and lingers there for a while. This kind of presence hardly sprawls; it is not broadly sunk like the first quartet, and not ecstatically spacious like Leonore’s and Florestan’s aria. It is not merely a flash in the pan, but is precisely that moment which Faust wanted to keep, which rings out, but for all that, does not cease to be a “moment”. Its boundless depth in a vertical direction has enough perspective to prevent it from being fleeting; in spite of this, it always just allows itself to be transposed into broadly developed ariaand choral-developments that linger.

Leonore’s excited shout — “First kill his wife!” – the trumpet signal, and also the extraordinarily tranquil flute music that follows possess a quasi vertical eternity, inasmuch as the Here and Now appear in absolute proximity. Its essence is an aureole that is hidden deep within it, no matter what the tempo, almost no matter what empirically defining expression is used. “My God, what a moment!”, Leonore sings at the most sublime point of the work, totally embraced by the music of Now. In Fidelio every road leads to this Rome. Its music, proceeding from this process and strategy, becomes completely immediate, alive like nothing else in the world.

It is not without foundation that from this every face is also magnified.

Beethoven scales things down with difficulty, and in this space almost everything strives for completion. Fidelio is related to the “rescue operas” of which there were quite a number at that time. The siege of the Bastille was still reverberating. But in Fidelio it wasn’t merely reverberating, Beethoven’s music creates from the revolution the area of the action itself. Without beating about the bush, it transforms the text in a revolutionary way, and the mere colportage of conjugal love, however wonderful; ceaselessly and unflagging, the revolution is born from the spirit of this music. Beethoven rewrites the act of revolution, departing from the same source, but starting from another sphere. From its first impulse that is soon left behind, from the future of its absolute beginning the revolution erupts and heads toward us, as the breaking up of the status, the beginning of freedom. The absolute horizon of revolution endures once and for all; in Fidelio, an apocalyptic darkness and light rule, the symbolism of the figures, signs, and triumphs is chiliastic. This is not yet so in the case of Marzelline, Jaquino, and Rocco,

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the supporting characters, who are at first as large as life and then become virtually invisible down in the depths. But in Leonore’s fidelity entirely different things also haunt us: self-abasement, indeed a descent into hell, when she goes down into the prison. And doesn’t the musical figure of Pizarro carry every feature of Pharaoh, Herod, Gessler, the fenriswolf and that Gnostic Satan who has dragged us down into the prison of this world and holds us captive here? What other extraordinary depths vibrate together with the trumpet signal at this, her moment, at this outstanding time, long desired, finally indirectly like pure Grace and the arrival of God. There is no need for associations, as in bad music, to hear this as the sound of Jericho’s trumpets in conjuring up a metaphysical event, and the walls come tumbling down. Indeed, the entire requiem rings out, the trumpets of the Last Judgment, the sound of the last trumpet is transformed in this moment; for Pizarro it is the Dies irae, for the rescued the Tuba mirum spargens sonum, as it is the same God who appears to evildoers as hell, and to the just as heaven. And what a mysterious bond between Leonore and Florestan is revealed in this signal that follows Leonore’s last note as a truly concluding tonic! The “indescribable joy” is no longer from this world; the March becomes a chorale, the rescued stand in its light like an Ecclesia triumphans, the glorification of Leonore becomes the Marian song of the blessed, their freedom can be heard above every known exultation, every depth, above everything that can be said. The trumpet signals the first blush of dawn, but its day has not yet arrived. In the reflected light of Fidelio this day continues to remain the most directly hidden.

Translated by Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay. The philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) wrote this in 1927 for a modern performance of Fidelio by the Krolloper of Berlin, whose conductor and director was Otto Klemperer.

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Fragments about Beethoven Theodor W. Adorno

It is the unique feature of music that it is not an image, it does not exist for another reality, but it is a reality sui generis. The prohibition against images does not apply to it, and yet it is a magical conciliatory ceremony.

Thus standing on the “height of a mountain pass” of mythology, it is at once demythologising and myth. In its innermost composition it is identical with Christianity — we could say that there is only as much music as there is Christianity, and that the forces of music are bound up with the forces of Christianity. Music and “passion”, Bach’s unique priority. His non-visual magic however is demonstration: the cosmos should be like this: Pythagoreans.

Music says, Let thy will be done. It is the pure language of prayer and humble entreaty. To this, however, Beethoven is linked most deeply through the element of rhetoric. His music is the worldly supplication of citizens: rhetorical music is the secularisation of Christian-liturgical music. That which in Beethoven is language and humanity can be unfurled from here.

In any case, it is even conceivable that Beethoven wished to become deaf — for from the sensual side of music he had already experienced that which pours out from loudspeakers today. “The world is a prison, in which the solitary cell should be given an advantage.” Karl Kraus […] In Beethoven freedom is only real as hope. It is one of the most important social connections. Let us just compare “Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten” [A better world will reward you] with Fidelio’s conclusion.

“The inaccessibility of joy.”

There is something hieratic and cultic in Fidelio. Beethoven’s “empire” is the unity of the hieratic and civic.

Fidelio does not depict the revolution, but relives it, so to speak, ritually repeated. It could easily be a composition for the anniversary of the siege of the Bastille. There is no tension in it, just a “transformation”: (Sacrifice!)

Leonora’s moment in the prison. It is predestination. The eccentric “stylized” simplicity of the means.

Translated by Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay. Theodor W. Adorno (1903 – 1969): Beethoven. Philosophie der Musik. Fragmente und Texte. Hrsg.von Rolf Tiedemann.

Frankfurt am Main 1995.

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From the pre-history of the Leonora theme

Werner Wolf

In 1790 Jean-Nicolas Bouilly (1763 – 1842), in his first opera libretto Pierre le Grand set to music by André Ernest Modeste Grétry, sang as a royalist indirectly of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (for which he received a golden snuffbox from them). However when the revolution took a more decisive turn, he thought it best to change to the republican side, and in 1793 in Tours he even accepted the role of revolutionary public prosecutor. In this capacity one of his tasks was to take charge of the trial of a friend of his youth, Comte René de Semblancay, the leader of the counter-revolutionary uprising in the Vendée. He was not too keen to do it, and prolonged the trial, during which time a prison guard named Pujol managed to find Blanche, the wife of the comte, and smuggle her into the prison disguised as a peasant woman.

Pujol and Blanche tried to secure the escape of Semblancay, but the attempt failed (though it provided important motives for Bouilly’s libretto Les deux journées set to music by Luigi Cherubini). The Committee of Public Safety meanwhile commissioned delegates to sit in judgment over Semblancay and the other leaders of the counter-revolutionary uprisings.

When however these delegates brought into force senseless terror measures that were maladroit politically, the Committee of Public Safety felt compelled to condemn their actions and withdraw the commission.

In the Vendée the radical Carrier allowed terror free reign and Robespierre’s agent Saint-Andrée deprived him of his position and ordered him immediately back to Paris. En route Carrier discovered there was a plan

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to set Semblancay free. He therefore, without the knowledge of SaintAndrée, immediately went back to Tours, intending to murder Semblancay.

As he was about to stab him with his knife, Semblancay’s wife, who along with the other prisoners was forced to be present, leapt in front of the comte to protect him with her body. She waved a pistol, at which Carrier fell to his knees in terror. Meanwhile Saint-Andrée had noticed Carrier’s disappearance, and at that very moment appeared on the scene to place Semblancay under the protection of the Republic.

Over the subsequent period Bouilly managed to prolong proceedings against Semblancay until the fall of Robespierre. The new rulers released Semblancay. Carrier however, after returning to Paris, had taken part, along with other Hébertists* – who had unexpectedly aligned themselves with right wing groups – in the downfall of Robespierre.

After the revolution Bouilly devoted himself exclusively to the theatre.

During this time he thought it important to sing in succession of Empress Joséphine and Empress Marie Louise (Napoleon’s first and second wives), the comtesse Du Barry (the wife of the nephew of Louis XVI who played an inglorious role after 1814 during the period of the restoration of the Bourbons) and Queen Amalie (wife of Louis Philippe the “citizen king”).

The experiences described above were useful to Bouilly in that they formed the pretext for him to write a large role for his friend the singer Julie Angélique Scio, who in 1797 enjoyed sensational success in the title role of Cherubini’s Médée. Scio commissioned Bouilly and Pierre Gaveaux – along with herself a singer at the Paris Théâtre de la rue Feydeau and also an opéra comique composer – to write for her another magnificent display role. When Bouilly related his experiences at Tours to her, the singer immediately saw the great dramatic possibilities latent in them, and urged the two to develop the story as an opera.

* A radical left-wing fraction denounced by Robespierre. Its leader, Jacques René Hébert, was executed on 24th March 1794 after a plot against Robespierre.

Werner Wolf: Einführung. In: Beethoven: Fidelio. Operntext. Leipzig 1965.

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The three versions of Fidelio Beate Hiltner-Hennenberg

Beethoven composed the three versions of Fidelio in 1805, 1806 and 1814.

During that time the history of Austria was closely linked to that of France.

The source of the topic was the French revolution. The librettist, Bouilly, made use of experiences he had had in 1793 and 1794 – the period of the tyrannical rule of the Convention and its deliberate use of terror. But he set the action in Spain at an earlier period. Pierre Gaveaux (1760 – 1825) composed an opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal (Leonore or conjugal love) which was performed in 1798, late in the revolutionary period in a France ruled by the Directory. In form the opera belongs to the genre of opéra comique with musical numbers and spoken dialogue. The opera semiseria Leonora, ossia L’amore conjugale written for Dresden by Ferdnando Paër (1771 – 1839) also took as its starting point Bouilly’s libretto.

The librettists of Beethoven’s three versions kept entirely to the original French setting, its characters and story. Its decidedly new quality, the leap towards a universal significance, was Beethoven’s achievement. From the standpoint of dramaturgy the topic is not without problems. The starting point is Florestan’s being held captive in prison, not in itself a strong situation. And the plot that develops from it is almost added on. Beethoven’s libretto is a German version which contains Singspiel-like features. The author was Joseph Sonnleithner, secretary to the court theatre. Sonnleithner basically followed Bouilly, but made some changes: he divided the plot

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into three acts and turned some of the dialogues into musical numbers (the spoken role of Pizarro was changed into a sung role). Also the ending is not a general pious moral lesson, but is in praise of Leonore’s constancy.

The process of change that produced the three versions cannot be traced today in all its details. Otto Jahn and Erich Prieger, who attempted to reconstruct the second version and the original Leonore, were forced despite their intensive researches to leave unanswered a number of questions. The first conception aimed at writing an opera in three acts. Taken alone, the acts are fairly schematic: thus, following the isolated overture each act consists of six musical items. The first act does not open with Marzelline and Jaquino’s duet Jetzt, Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein, but with Marzelline’s aria O wär ich schon mit dir vereint later moved to second place. This is followed by their trio with Rocco (Ein Mann ist bald genommen) and then the quartet Mir ist so wunderbar. The number of participants gradually increases. After the quartet there follows Rocco’s “money” aria, and the act closes with the trio for Marzelline, Leonore and Rocco Gut, Söhnchen, gut, hab immer Mut. The second act of the early version also has six musical numbers leading to the meeting of Pizarro and the prisoners. Of these six, five became part of the first act in the final version. Leonore and Marzelline’s duet Um in der Ehe froh zu leben is there omitted. In the early version Leonore’s aria (before the finale with its chorus of prisoners) was preceded by the recitative Ach brich noch nicht, mein mattes Herz – where Leonore’s thoughts turn to Florestan.

In the final version instead of this there is her recitative addressed in her imagination to Pizarro: Abscheulicher, wo eilst du hin!

In the early version the third act leads to the prison scene, with this reaching the heart of the plot. It begins with Florestan’s scene and his recitative Gott, welch Dunkel hier and the slow section of the aria In des Lebens Frühlingstagen, followed by a moderately quick closing section. In the final version Florestan has a vision near the end of the aria: an angel in the form of Leonore. There is also a very important change before Leonore and Rocco’s duet Nur hurtig fort, nur frisch gegraben: the singing emerges first from melodrama, then (1806) only words remain.

The premiere of the early version took place later than planned, due to difficulties caused by the censor. This was on 20th November 1805, one week before Napoleon entered Vienna. There were two more performances, then Beethoven withdrew the opera. He had become aware of dramaturgical faults, and he thought the singers were very weak. And contemporary opinion was hardly in its favour. The journal Der Freimüthige reported on 26th December 1805: “the music fell far below expectations. Though much is

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tastefully composed, both melody and characterization lacked the irresistible passionate and perceptive expression which takes hold of us so forcefully in the works of Mozart and Cherubini”. In the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, the most important German language musical journal, we find this: “Among the musical productions of the last month the most unusual was without doubt Beethoven’s long awaited opera Fidelio, or conjugal love. […] it was received very coldly.” After this the reviewer writes in some detail about the performance: “Until now Beethoven has sacrificed beauty for novelty; so for this his first theatrical vocal production we expected first of all to be irradiated by a certain originality of creation – and it was just this that we found the least in evidence.”

Quite probably Beethoven withdrew his opera due to the bad reviews.

His first revision of 1806 was done in a practical way. He condensed the work, dividing the music into two acts. Hardly a single item remained which he did not revise. The finales were reduced by a quarter of their length, and he completely erased Rocco’s “money” aria. Even so the musical substance remained untouched, despite the cuts and re-arranging. The work was greatly enriched by the Leonore overture no.3, which replaced the second Leonore overture composed for the first version. The literary assistance for the 1806 revision was provided by Beethoven’s friend Stephan von Breuning. The new version was once again prepared for performance by Seyfried, who this time also conducted the premiere. The performance was not unsuccessful, but it was only repeated once. Beethoven clearly thought he’d been cheated financially, and sent reproachful messages to the Intendant.

The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung more or less ignored the performance, Cherubini’s Faniska and Grétry’s Die Samniterinnen arousing much more interest. Its assessment was buried inside a report written about other musical events in Vienna. It now seemed as though Beethoven put Fidelio to one side. He turned his attention to other fields, and set new standards in the symphony with the “Eroica” and wrote the “Waldstein” Sonata. But there came a time when he returned to the opera. According to Konrad Küster “he experimented to see if he could incorporate his new experiences into the context of an old work.” When Beethoven was working on the third version of his opera in 1814, his career was on the rise, and the press stood behind him.

On 23rd May 1814 three singers at the Vienna Kärntnertortheater selected Fidelio for a further performance: Ignaz Saal as the Minister, Karl Weinmüller as Rocco and Johann Michael Vogl as Pizarro. Beethoven however insisted on certain changes and worked on them from March to May 1814. This time

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he brought Georg Friedrich Treitschke in to revise the libretto. Treitschke reworked the dialogues and quickened the plot by making cuts. All this was made to the second version. It is worthy of note that some of his own cuts Beethoven found too radical, and he restored them. The Singspiel character returned to the work. Rocco’s “money” aria returned to its original place with a different text in two verses. Also to be noted is the restoration of the melodrama No.12 (a). In contrast Beethoven cut the duet Um in der Ehe froh zu leben (2nd version No. 9) and the trio Ein Mann ist bald genommen (2nd version No. 10). The opera begins with the duet Jetzt, Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein which is followed by a re-worked version of Marzelline’s aria.

Leonore great aria did not remain untouched: the recitative was altered and the aria shortened. The first finale became longer with the re-appearance of the prisoners. Florestan’s aria was given a new Allegro ending. The closing scene takes place not in the prison but in the open air. Beethoven cleverly tailored the re-writing of the libretto to fit his musical needs. He made Florestan’s aria more important by introducing it not just with the usual rectitative but in addition with an instrumental introduction. The music progresses in a calculated crescendo from the orchestral piece to the recitative to the aria.

At the premiere of the opera’s third version on 23rd May 1814 Beethoven himself was the conductor. His advanced hardness of hearing was a great impediment: there is a tradition that the conductor Umlauf “stood behind his back and with his hands and eyes directed everything in the right way”.

As in 1805 and in 1806, so now Anna Pauline Milder-Hauptmann took the leading role. The reviews praised the performance “most of the musical numbers were greeted with noisy applause, and the composer was called out in front of the curtain.”

Beate Hiltner-Hennenberg: Die Fassungen des Fidelio in ihren Auswirkungen auf die Gesangspartien: Dramaturgien der Aufklärung. In: Fidelio/Leonore: Annährungen an ein zentrales Werk des Musiktheaters. Hrsg. von Peter Csobádi u. a. Anif 1998.

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J煤lia Hajn贸czy Szabolcs Brickner

Júlia Hajnóczy István Berczelly Péter Fried

Egmont’s Dream Johann Wolfgang von Goethe EGMONT He seats himself upon the couch; music Sweet sleep! Like the purest happiness, thou comest most willingly, uninvited, unsought. Thou dost loosen the knots of earnest thoughts, dost mingle all images of joy and of sorrow, unimpeded the circle of inner harmony flows on, and wrapped in fond delusion, we sink into oblivion, and cease to be.

He sleeps; music accompanies his slumber. Behind his couch the wall appears to open and discovers a brilliant apparition. Freedom, in a celestial garb, surrounded by a glory, reposes on a cloud. Her features are those of Clara and she inclines towards the sleeping hero. Her countenance betokens compassion, she seems to lament his fate. Quickly she recovers herself and with an encouraging gesture exhibits the symbols of freedom, the bundle of arrows, with the staff and cap. She encourages him to be of good cheer, and while she signifies to him that his death will secure the freedom of the provinces, she hails him as a conqueror, and extends to him a laurel crown. As the wreath approaches his head, Egmont moves like one asleep, and reclines with his face towards her. She holds the wreath suspended over his head, martial music is heard in the distance, at the first sound the vision disappears. The music grows louder and louder.

Egmont awakes. The prison is dimly illuminated by the dawn. His first impulse is to lift his hand to his head, he stands up, and gazes round, his hand still upraised.

The crown is vanished! Beautiful vision, the light of day has frighted thee!

Yes, their revealed themselves to my sight uniting in one radiant form the two sweetest joys of my heart. Divine Liberty borrowed the mien of my beloved one; the lovely maiden arrayed herself in the celestial garb of my friend. In a solemn moment they appeared united, with aspect more earnest than tender. With bloodstained feet the vision approached, the waving folds of her robe also were tinged with blood. It was my blood,

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and the blood of many brave hearts. No! It shall not be shed in vain!

Forward! Brave people! The goddess of liberty leads you on! And as the sea breaks through and destroys the barriers that would oppose its fury, so do ye overwhelm the bulwark of tyranny, and with your impetuous flood sweep it away from the land which it usurps.

Drums.

Hark! Hark! How often has this sound summoned my joyous steps to the field of battle and of victory! How bravely did I tread, with my gallant comrades, the dangerous path of fame! And now, from this dungeon I shall go forth, to meet a glorious death; I die for freedom, for whose cause I have lived and fought, and for whom I now offer myself up at sorrowing sacrifice.

The background is occupied by Spanish soldiers with halberts.

Yes, lead them on! Close your ranks, ye terrify me not. I am accustomed to stand amid the serried ranks of war, and environed by the threatening forms of death, to feel, with double zest, the energy of life.

Drums.

The foe closes round on every side! Swords are flashing; courage, friends!

Behind are your parents, your wives, your children!

Pointing to the guard.

And these are impelled by the word of their leader, not by their own free will. Protect your homes! And to save those who are most dear to you, be ready to follow my example, and to fall with joy.

Drums. As he advances through the guards towards the door in the background, the curtain falls. The music joins in, and the scene closes with a symphony of victory.

Translated by Anna Swanwick. In 1809-10 Beethoven composed incidental music (op. 84) for the tragedy by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 – 1832). Goethe’s Egmont clearly had an influence on the third version of Fidelio.

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“…very far from being the same…”

Georg Friedrich Treitschke

The Inspizienten of the R. I. Court Opera, Saal, Vogl and Wein­müller, were granted a performance for their benefit, the choice of a work being left to them, without cost. […] Beethoven was approached for the loan of the opera and very unselfishly declared his willing­ness, but on the unequivocal condition that many changes be made. At the same time he proposed my humble self as the person to make these changes. I had enjoyed his more intimate friendship for some time, and my twofold position as stagemanager and opera-poet made his wish a pious duty. With Sonnleithner’s permission I first took up the dialogue, wrote it almost wholly anew, succinct

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and clear as possible – an essential thing in the case of Singspiele. […] The scene of the entire first act was laid in an open court; the positions of Nos. 1 and 2 were exchanged; later the guard entered to a newly com­posed march; Leonore’s Air received a new introduction, and only the last movement, ‘O du, für den ich alles trug,’ was retained. The succeeding scene and duet– according to Seyfried’s description ‘a charming duettino for soprano voices with concertante parts for violin and violoncello, C major, 9/8 time’–which was on the old book, Beethoven tore out of the score; the former was unnecessary, the latter a concert piece. I was compelled to agree with him; the purpose in view was to save the opera as a whole. A little terzetto for Rocco, Marzelline and Jaquino which followed (‘a most melodious terzetto in E-flat’ as Seyfried says) fared no better. There had been a want of action and the music did not warm the hearers. A new dialogue was desired to give more occasion for the first finale. My friend was again right in demanding a different ending. I made many plans; at length we came to an agreement: to bring together the return of the prisoners at the command of Pizarro and their lamentation.

The second act offered a great difficulty at the very outset. Beethoven at first wanted to distinguish poor Florestan with an aria, but I offered the objection that it would not be possible to allow a man nearly dead of hunger to sing bravura. We composed one thing and another; at last, in his opinion, I hit the nail on the head. I wrote words which describe the last blazing up of life before its extinguishment: ‘Und spür ich nicht linde, sanft säuselnde Luft, Und ist nicht mein Grab mir erhellet?

Ich seh’, wie ein Engel, im rosigen Duft, Sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet.

Ein Engel, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich!

Der führt mich zur Freiheit, ins himmlische Reich!’

What I am now relating will live forever in my memory. Beethoven came to me about seven o’clock in the evening. After we had discussed other things, he asked how matters stood with the aria? It was just finished, I handed it to him. He read, ran up and down the room, muttered, growled, as was his habit instead of singing – and tore open the pianoforte. My wife had often vainly begged him to play; today he placed the text in front of him and began to improvise marvellously – music which no magic could hold fast. Out of it he seemed to conjure the motive of the aria. The hours went by,

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but Beethoven improvised on. Supper, which he had purposed to eat with us, was served, but – he would not permit himself to be disturbed. It was late when he embraced me, and declining the meal, he hurried home. The next day the admirable composition was finished. Nearly all the rest in the second act was confined to abbreviations and changes in the poetry. I think that a careful comparison of the two printed texts will justify my reasons. The grandiose quartet ‘Er sterbe,’ etc., was interrupted by me with a short pause during which Jaquino and other persons report the arrival of the Minister and make the accomplishment of the murder impossible by summoning Pizarro away. After the next duet Rocco comes and accompanies Florestan and Leonore to the Minister.

As soon as the libretto was ready – towards the end of March – I sent a fair copy to Beethoven, and a few days later he wrote expressing his admiration of it, as you can see here: “My dear Treitschke!

I very much enjoyed reading your improvements to the opera. It has made me think I can rebuild the bare ruins of an ancient castle.

Your friend Beethoven” In order to make use of the more favourable season, the performers involved in the extra performance urged that the work be finished; Beethoven however made slow progress. When I implored him in writing, he replied in a similar way:

“The whole business of the opera is the most tiresome thing in the world. I am dissatisfied with the greater part of it, and there is almost no item where my dissatisfaction does not need it to be patched up with something more to my satisfaction. But this is very far from being the same as giving myself over to freedom of thought or enthusiastic work.”

Georg Friedrich Treitschke (1776 – 1842) published his notes about his cooperation with Beethoven in 1841, the year before he died.

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“…some good bits left from the ship run aground…”

Beethoven

[…] it would be quicker for me to write something new, rather than write new things onto the old in the same way I usually compose, in my instrumental music I always keep the whole in mind, but here to some extent the whole as fallen apart, and I’ve got to start again and get into all the bits … so that in two weeks the opera can be performed, it’s impossible […] I can assure you, dear T, that this opera will get me the crown of the martyrs, and if you hadn’t given so much work to it and so advantageously revised everything, for which I am eternally grateful to you, then I would scarcely have been able to make myself do it – by doing this you have rescued some good bits left from the ship run aground […] I’m now continuing it until all of it is ready, in the same way you have changed it all and made it better, which I can see every minute, will not be after all so quick as when I write something new – and to do it in two weeks is impossible […]

Letter to Georg Friedrich Treitschke in Vienna, beginning of March 1814.

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“…an organic whole made from bits of music…”

Otto Jahn

One sits in amazement at these persistent attempts, and can’t understand how an organic whole could have been made from such bits of music. If we compare the finished work with the chaos of the sketches we are gripped by a most profound admiration for the creative spirit which saw the task so clearly and found the outlines of how to execute it so firmly and securely so that in the middle of all this trial and error the whole could still grow and develop from a single root. And if these sketches often give the impression of indecision and groping for the way, we later admire afresh the self criticism of genius which, after trying everything, eventually kept with a sovereign certainty what was best. I have had occasion to examine a good number of Beethoven’s sketch books and I know of no example where I didn’t have to acknowledge that what he selected was indeed the best material, or where I felt we should be sorry that a rejected sketch did not get used.

Leonore oder Fidelio?, a fundamentally important essay by Otto Jahn (1813 – 1869), was published in 1863 in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.

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“…as though I were watching one of Hoffmann’s fantastic figures appear before me…”

Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient Under the guidance of my talented mother many of the traits in Leonore’s character became clear to me; however I was still too young, too little developed within to have a full understanding of what took place in Leonore’s soul, emotions for which Beethoven had conceived his immortal harmonies. At the rehearsals which were led by Umlauf who was then kapellmeister, the limits of my underdeveloped young voice soon became known and many things in my part were changed for me so that the effect did not suffer too much. The last rehearsals were set, when I learned before the dress rehearsal that Beethoven had asked for the honor of conducting the work himself in celebration of the day. On hearing this news a great fear came over me, and I also remember my frightful awkwardness which nearly drove my poor mother, as well as those who were working with me, to despair. But Beet­hoven sat in the orchestra and waved his baton over everyone’s heads, and I had never seen the man before! – At that time the master’s physical ear was already closed to all sounds. With a bewildered face and unearthly inspired eyes, waving his baton back and forth with violent motions, he stood in the midst of the performing musicians and didn’t hear a note! If he thought it should be piano he crouched down almost under the conductor’s desk and if he wanted forte he jumped up with the strangest gestures, utter­ing the weirdest sounds. With each piece our courage dwindled further and I felt as though I were watching one of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fantastic figures appear before me. The inevitable happened: the deaf master threw the singers and orchestra completely off the beat and into the greatest con­fusion, and no one knew any longer where they were. Beethoven, however, knew nothing of all this, and so with difficulty our rehearsal came to an end, with which he seemed to be well satisfied, for he laid down his baton with a cheery smile. But now it was impossible to entrust him with the perform­ance, and Kapellmeister Umlauf had to perform the heart-rending task of pointing out to him that the opera could not be given under his direction. I am told that he resigned himself with a melancholy look upwards, and I found him at the performance on the following night sitting in the orchestra behind Umlauf lost in profound thought. ... Beethoven followed the whole performance with eager attention, and he looked as if he were trying to see from each of our gestures whether we had even half understood him.

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“My own real fear”

Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient

When I was learning the role of Fidelio in Vienna, at the moment when Leonora, standing before her husband, points her pistol at the governor, I couldn’t find a natural way of expressing myself, however many times I thought it through and tried to imagine myself in the situation of such a woman. Of course I had some ideas, but something was missing and I couldn’t work out what it was. And so the evening of the performance arrived, and only God, not the audience, can know how an artist who takes things seriously feels when putting on the costumes to be worn in the role.

As the moment drew near, I became more and more afraid.

When it finally arrived and I had to sing the fateful words and point the pistol at the governor, I was so terrified by the thought of acting it badly that my whole body began to shake, and I thought I was going to collapse. So you can imagine how I felt when the whole house burst into crazy applause, and after the performance they said that this moment was the most successful and gripping part of my performance! What I hadn’t found with the greatest exertion of energy was done for me at the decisive moment by my own real fear. The effect I felt it had on the audience made me realize how I should approach this moment and express it. What I first discovered subconsciously I naturally preserved for all my later performances of the role.

Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (1804 – 1860) first sang the title role of Fidelio in November 1822 – at the age of seventeen – which was taught to her by her mother, the famous actress Sophie Schröder. Her sensational portrayal of the character helped Beethoven’s work to finally break through. Her memoir quoted above was written by Schröder-Devrient “k. sächsische Hof- und Kammersängerin” in 1845 for the festival album published on the occasion of the dedication of the Beethoven monument at Bonn. The second description first appeared in a biography of Joseph Weigl published in 1855 in Kassel.

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Fidelio Hector Berlioz

Opera in Three Acts by Beethoven.

Its Performances at the Théâtre-Lyrique

On the first day of Ventôse in the year VI, the Théâtre Feydeau per­formed Léonore or Conjugal Love, historical event in two acts (such was the title of the piece), libretto by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, music by Pierre Gaveaux. In spite of the talent shown by the two leading actors, that is, Gaveaux, the composer, and Mme Scio, a great actress of the period, the work struck people as only second-rate.

Several years later, Paër composed a graceful score to an Italian li­bretto in which Bouilly’s Léonore was again the heroine. It was after seeing a performance of Paër’s Leonora that Beethoven, with his usual rough humor, told the composer: “I like your opera, I’d like to set it to music.”

Such was the origin of the masterpiece I want to discuss now. The first appearance of Beethoven’s Fidelio on the German stage gave no sign of its eventual fame; it apparently had only a short run. A short time later, it reappeared with changes in both text and music and intro­duced by a new overture. This second attempt was a complete suc­cess. The audience demanded Beethoven with loud shouts, and he was hoisted to the stage after

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the first act and again after the second, whose finale aroused an enthusiasm hitherto unknown in Vienna. The music of Fidelio nonetheless had to endure a great deal of more or less acerb criticism. But from that time on, the opera has been performed in all the theaters of Germany, where it is part of the classic repertory.

It was similarly honored a little later in the theaters of London; and in 1827, a German troupe performed it in Paris. The two leading roles were sung with rare talent by Haitzinger and Mme Schroeder-De­vrient, and the opera was acclaimed enthusiastically.

Fidelio has just been staged at the Théâtre-Lyrique; a fortnight earlier, it was being performed again at Covent Garden in London, while at the present moment, it is being played in New York. You would look in vain for a house where you can hear Gaveaux’s Léonore or Paër’s Leo­nora. Only scholars know that these two operas exist. Indeed, they are no longer with us; they have passed on. The reason is that of the three scores, one is extremely weak; the second is, at most, a work of talent; and the third a work of genius.

There can be no doubt; the more I listen to Beethoven’s work, the more I read the score, the more I find to admire. It seems to me as fine in detail as it is beautiful as a whole. Everywhere it displays vigor, grandeur, originality, and feelings as deep as they are true.

Fidelio belongs to that sturdy species of works which, though at­tacked with the most inconceivable prejudice and the most flagrant lies, are still so vital that nothing can prevail against them. They are like those robust beech trees that grow among rocks and ruins and end up splitting the rocks and pushing through the masonry; they rise up proud and green, all the more solidly rooted because of the obstacles they have had to overcome; whereas willows that grow with ease along the river­bank fall into the mud and die there forgotten.

Beethoven wrote four overtures for his one opera. After finishing the first, he started rewriting it for no apparent reason. He kept the same structure and themes, but linked them by different modulations, gave them a different instrumentation, and added a crescendo and a flute solo. This solo, in my opinion, does not reach the lofty heights of the rest of the work. But the composer seems to have preferred this second version, for it was published first.

The manuscript of the original remained in the hands of Beethoven’s friend Schindler and was published only ten years ago by the firm of Richault. I have had the honor of conducting it some twenty times, at Drury Lane Theatre in London and at a few concerts in Paris: it pro­duces a grandiose and stirring effect. The second version, however, has now firmly established the popularity it won under the title Leonore Overture. Most probably it will keep it.

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This superb overture, perhaps the finest Beethoven ever wrote, shared the fate of several numbers of the opera that were dropped after the first performances. Another, in C major like the other two, was no luckier.

It is a charming and gentle piece, but its ending did not seem suited to arousing applause. Finally, for the revival of his rewritten opera, Beetho­ven composed the one in E major, known as the Fidelio Overture; this was the one ultimately settled on in preference to the three others. A masterly work, incomparable in verve and brilliance, it is truly a sym­phonic masterpiece, though not related either in character or in themes to the opera it introduces.

The other overtures, by contrast, are rather like abridged versions of the opera itself. They have the tender accents of Leonore, the pitiable plaints of the prisoner dying of hunger, the de­licious melodies of the third-act trio, and the distant fanfare announcing the arrival of the minister who will free Florestan. Everything in these overtures quivers with dramatic tension; they are indeed true introduc­tions to Fidelio.

The directors of the principal theaters of Germany and England per­ ceived, after 30 or 40 years, that the second great overture, Leonore (the first published) [i.e., Leonore No. 3], was a superb work and they now have it played as an entr’acte before the second act of the opera. The Fidelio Overture in E is kept to introduce the first act. It is a pity that the Théâtre-Lyrique did not see fit to do likewise. I should even like to see the Conservatoire take the risk some day of following Mendels­sohn’s example of conducting all four overtures at one of the Gewand­haus concerts in Leipzig.

Perhaps it would be far too bold a venture for Paris. Why so? Well, because boldness, as is well known, is not the chief fault of our musical institutions.

The story of Fidelio (a few words about the play being now in order) is both sad and melodramatic. This fact has contributed not a little to the prejudice of the French public against the opera. It is the story of a political prisoner whom the governor of a fortress has thrown into a dungeon and intends to starve to death. The prisoner’s wife, Leonore, having disguised herself as a boy and taken the name Fidelio, has insin­uated herself as a servant into the good graces of the jailer, Rocco. Marzelline, Rocco’s daughter and the promised bride of Jaquino the turnkey, is soon captivated by Fidelio’s good looks and loses no time in abandon­ing her vulgar swain for him. Pizarro, the prison governor, eager to see his victim dead, and, finding that hunger is acting too slowly, decides to cut the prisoner’s throat himself.

He orders Rocco to dig a hole in a corner of the dungeon, into which the prisoner’s body will soon be thrown.

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Rocco chooses Fidelio to help him in this dismal task. Picture the poor woman’s anguish at thus finding herself near her husband, whom she dares not approach and who is about to be killed. Soon the cruel­Pizarro arrives; the prisoner rises in his chains, recognizes his executioner, and defies him.

Pizarro advances, dagger in hand, but Fidelio thrusts herself between them, pulls a pistol from her breast and aims it at Pizarro, who recoils in terror.

At that very moment they hear the sound of a distant trumpet. It is the signal to lower the drawbridge and open the gate. The Minister is announced. Pizarro cannot finish his bloody work; he rushes from the dungeon; the prisoner is saved. For when the Minister appears, he rec­ognizes Pizarro’s victim as his friend Florestan. Whence general rejoic­ing–and much embarrassment for poor Marzelline, who learns that Fidelio is a woman and goes back to her Jaquino. The Théâtre-Lyrique has felt it desirable to transfer these situations of M. Bouilly’s drama to a fresh setting, which is Milan in the year 1459, the main characters being Ludovico Sforza; Jean Galeas; his wife, Isa­bella of Aragon; and King Charles VIII of France. Thus, it has been pos­sible to create at the dénouement a brilliant tableau, and in costumes less gloomy than those of the original work. Such was the motive, how­ever inadequate, that led M. Carvalho, the theater’s able director, to make the substitution while Fidelio was in rehearsal. In France it is not thought acceptable merely to translate a foreign opera. The changes in Fidelio, it is true, were carried out without too much damage to the score. The music still goes with situations similar in character to those for which it was written.

What stands in the way of this music for the Paris public is its chaste melody, and the composer’s supreme disdain for sonorous effects that are not justified, for routine closes and predictable phrases. It is also the rich soberness of his instrumentation and the boldness of his harmony; it is above all–I am not afraid to say it–the depth of his power to express emotion. One has to give ear to everything in this complex score; everything must be heard if one is to understand it. The orchestral parts–­sometimes the principal ones, sometimes the more hidden–contain the expressive accent, the passionate outcry; in short, the ideas that the composer could not embody in the vocal line. This does not mean that the voice no longer predominates, as is claimed by those tiresome bores who keep on repeating the objection Grétry made to Mozart: “He put the pedestal on the stage and the statue in the orchestra.”

This same criticism had already been made about Gluck, and was later leveled at Weber, at Spontini, at Beethoven, and will always be leveled at anyone who refuses to write platitudes for the voice and who–while exercising a wise moderation–gives interesting parts to the orchestra.

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As a matter of fact, the very people who are so quick to criticize the true masters for supposedly making the instruments usurp the role of the voice do not set great store by their own precept. Every day, more than ever during the past ten years, we have seen the orchestra turned into a military band, a blacksmith’s forge or a workshop for boilermakers–all this without the critics becoming indignant or even taking the slightest notice of such atrocities. As things are now, the orchestra can be noisy, violent, brutal, insipid, revolting, destructive of both voice and melody, and the critics utter not a word. But when the orchestra is sub­tle, delicate, intelligent, if at times it attracts attention by its liveliness, grace, or eloquence, while also adhering to its role of serving the needs of the drama and the art of music, then it is censured. By contrast, the orchestra is readily excused for saying nothing at all–or nothing but stupid and vulgar things.

Without counting the four overtures, the score of Fidelio consists of sixteen numbers. There were more in the original version, but several were dropped for the second performance of the work in Vienna; many cuts and changes were also made in those that were kept. A publisher in Leipzig undertook (I think it was in 1855) to publish the original work complete, indicating the cuts and changes inflicted upon it. Studying this curious score gives one an idea of what torture it must have been for the impatient Beethoven to submit to these alterations. No doubt he raged as he did so, and compared himself to the fate of Alfieri’s slave: “Servo, si, ma servo ognor fremente” (I serve, yes, but never without grumbling).

In Germany, as in Italy, as in France, as everywhere in the theater, everybody knows better than the composer, everybody without excep­ tion. The composer is a public enemy, and if some apprentice stagehand asserts that a piece is too long, everyone hastens to take his side against Gluck, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, or Rossini. Speaking of Rossini, look at the insolent cuts made in his masterpiece William Tell, both before and after its first performance. For poets and musicians, the theater is a school of humility; the poets find themselves being instructed by per­sons ignorant of grammar, the musicians by people who do not know their scales. All these Aristarchs, moreover, harbor a bias against anything that reveals a trace of boldness or novelty; they are filled with an invincible love for safe banalities. In the opera theaters especially, every­one assumes the right to follow Boileau’s precept: “Ajoutez quelquefois et souvent effacez” (You should sometimes add but more often erase). This practice is observed so well and so variously–copy editors of one theater invariably seeing black where others see white–that should a score go traveling unprotected from theater to theater, the handiwork of all the correctors would leave barely ten pages intact.

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The sixteen numbers of Beethoven’s Fidelio are almost all noble and beautiful in countenance. But they are beautiful in different ways, which is precisely what gives them their outstanding worth. The first duet between Marzelline and her fiancé is distinctive for its familiar, cheerful style and piquant simplicity; the character of the two people is revealed at once. The aria in C minor for Marzelline seems in its melodic form to approach Mozart’s best style. Beethoven, however, handles the orchestra with more meticulous care than his illustrious predecessor ever did.

After this lovely piece comes a quartet [for Marzelline, Fidelio, Jaquino, and Rocco]. Its exquisite melody is treated in canon at the octave; each voice enters with the theme, first as a solo accompanied by a small orchestra of cellos, violas, and clarinets; then as a duet; then a trio; and finally as a complete quartet. Rossini wrote a host of ravishing things in this form; one is the canon “Mi manca la voce” in Mosè. But the canon in Fidelio is an andante, not followed by the usual allegro with its cabaletta and noisy coda.

So the audience, though enchanted by the graceful andante, remain at a loss when they do not get their final allegro, their cadence, their lash of the whip. Come to think of it, why not give them a lash of the whip?

Rocco’s couplets on the power of gold, as Gaveaux wrote it for his French score, should be compared with those in Beethoven’s German score. Of all the numbers in Gaveaux’s Léonore, it is perhaps the one that can best stand the juxtaposition. Beethoven’s song charms by its frank cheerfulness, though a modulation and an abrupt change of meter in the middle somewhat modifies its energetic simplicity. Gaveaux’s song, though of a more ordinary style, is no less interesting in its me­lodic frankness, excellent adaptation to the words, and pungent orchestration.

In the trio that follows, Beethoven begins to use larger forms, with extensive developments and a richer, more stirring orchestration. One senses the approaching drama; its high emotions are prefigured by dis­tant flashes of lightning.

Next comes a march; the melody and modulations are felicitous, though its mood is bleak, as a march of prison guards must be. The opening two notes of the theme, struck with a hollow sound by the timpani and a pizzicato in the double-basses, from the outset contribute to the gloom.

Neither this march nor the preceding trio has a counterpart in Gav­eaux’s opera. The same is true of many other numbers in Beethoven’s opulent score.

Pizarro’s aria is one such. Although it received absolutely no applause in Paris, I nevertheless ask permission to consider it a masterpiece. In this fearsome aria, the ferocious joy of a scoundrel eager to wreak ven­geance is

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Drawings by Francisco Goya Zeichnungen von Francisco Goya 1810-20

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better to die Es ist besser zu sterben << A prisoner can be kept secure without torture << Ein Gefangener kann auch ohne Folter sicher bewacht werden

Groaning and weeping Stรถhnend und weinend

Zapata, your glory will live for ever Zapata, dein Ruhm wird ewig leben

What cruelty Welche Grausamkeit

You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bear to look Man kann nicht hinschauen

Trapped In der Falle

depicted with appalling realism. In his opera, Beethoven has closely followed Gluck’s precept that instruments be used only as re­quired by the degree of importance and of passion. Here for the first time he unleashes the whole orchestra, launching it with a crash on the minor-ninth chord of D minor.

Everything shudders, vibrates, cries aloud, and flails about. True, the vocal part is nothing but declamation, but what a declamation! And how true its accents, which develop a savage intensity when, after establishing the major mode, the composer brings in the chorus of Pizarro’s guards; their voices accompany his words, murmuring at first, then bursting into full force at the conclusion. It is wonderful! In Germany I heard Pischek sing this aria with stunning power.

The duet for two basses (Rocco and Pizarro) does not quite reach the same heights. Even so, I cannot approve the liberty taken by the Théâtre-Lyrique in dropping it. A similar kind of liberty was taken in Vi­enna–but at least it was done more or less with the composer’s con­sent–in dropping the charming duet for sopranos sung by Fidelio and Marzelline. In it a solo violin and cello, aided by a few phrases from the orchestra, accompany the two voices with elegance. This duet, re­covered thanks to the Leipzig score mentioned above, was reinstated at the Théâtre-Lyrique production. It would seem as if the experts of the Paris theater do not share the view of those of the Vienna theater! What a good thing it is, else we would have been deprived of this musical dialogue, so fresh, so sweet, so elegant! They say it is to the prompter at the Théâtre-Lyrique that we owe its reinstatement. Worthy prompter!

Fidelio’s great aria is made up of a recitative, an adagio cantabile, and a final allegro with obbligato accompaniment of three horns and a bassoon.

Now I find the recitative charged with fine dramatic impetus, the adagio sublime in its tenderness and saddened grace, the allegro stirring in its noble enthusiasm, superb, and fully worthy of being the model for Agathe’s aria in Der Freischütz. I know there are excellent critics who do not share my opinion; I am glad that I do not share theirs.

The allegro theme of this admirable aria is introduced by the three horns and bassoon playing nothing more than the five notes of the tonic chord: B, E, G [#], B, and E. Out of these are formed four measures of incredible originality. You could ask any musician who does not know Fidelio to make a hundred different combinations of these five notes and I wager that not one would produce the proud and impetuous phrase that Beethoven fashioned, so unexpected is its rhythm. For many peo­ple, this allegro is seriously flawed because it does not contain a little tune that is easy to remember. These dilettanti, insensitive to the many striking beauties of the

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music, wait for their little four-measure phrase like children expecting to find the little king hidden in their Twelfth Night cake, or like provincials waiting for the high B-natural from the tenor making his debut. The cake may be delicious, the tenor may have the most delightful voice, yet neither will have any success without the precious accessory! How could they?

There is no king in that cake! The tenor hasn’t the high note! Agathe’s aria in Der Freichütz is almost pop­ular; it has the note. But how many arias, even by Rossini, that prince of melodists, have been neglected for want of the note!

The four wind instruments that accompany Fidelio’s aria upset most listeners by being too insistent in drawing attention to themselves. Yet these instruments make no display of pointless difficulties. Beethoven has not used them as solo instruments, in the ostentatious sense of the word, as Mozart did several times with the basset horn. In La Cle­menza di Tito, while the prima donna sings “I can see death approach­ing,” Mozart gives the basset horn a kind of concerto to perform. This contrast between a character who is prey to the saddest emotions, and a virtuoso who, under pretext of accompanying her song, thinks only of showing off the agility of his fingers, is one of the most childish and unseemly.

It is contrary to dramatic sense and even to good musical effect. Such is not the role Beethoven assigned to his four wind instru­ments. It is not a matter of making them shine, but of obtaining a kind of accompaniment in perfect keeping with the feelings of the character, together with a special sound that no other orchestral combination can produce. The veiled, slightly grating timbre of the horns goes perfectly with the painful joy and anxious hope that fills Leonore’s heart; it is as sweet and gentle as the cooing of doves. About the same time, Spontini, without having heard Beethoven’s Fidelio, wrote a similar passage for horns to accompany the beautiful aria in La Vestale, “Toi que j’im­plore” (Thee, whom I beseech).

Since then, several masters–Donizetti among others, in his Lucia–have done the same thing with equal felicity. All this is evidence of the special expressive quality of the horns when used by composers familiar with the musical language of the passions and their nuances. It was indeed a great and tender soul that found utterance in this moving inspiration.

The emotion aroused by the prisoners’ chorus is no less deep for being less intense. A wretched band of unfortunates emerges from their dun­geon for a breath of air in the prison yard. Listen, as they come on stage, to the opening measures of the orchestra, to the radiant

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bloom of these soft, rich harmonies, to the timid voices as they slowly come together to reach an expansive harmony, which is like a sigh of happiness issuing from all these oppressed breasts. And what a melodious line in the winds that accompany them!

Some might say here again: “Why did the composer not give the mel­ody to the voices and the vocal parts to the orchestra?” Why? Because it would have been an obvious blunder. The voices sing exactly what they should sing; one note added to the vocal parts would damage their expression, so right, so true, and so deeply felt. Melodious though it is, the instrumental line is only an ancillary idea; it is especially suited to the winds, and it could not set off with greater perfection the softness of the vocal harmonies so ingeniously designed above the orchestra. I cannot think that any composer endowed with common sense, no mat­ter what his school, would criticize Beethoven’s idea.

The prisoners’ rejoicing is disturbed momentarily by the entrance of their guards. Instantly, the musical coloring changes; everything be­ comes dull and leaden. But the guards finish their rounds: their suspi­ cious eyes no longer bear down on the prisoners. Now the tonality of the choral episode moves closer to the main key, hints at it, touches it; then a brief silence–and the first theme reappears in the original key, with a naturalness and charm I shall not even begin to describe. It is light, it is air, it is sweet liberty, it is life restored to us.

Some listeners, as they dry their eyes at the conclusion of this chorus, may be outraged by the silence in the hall when it should be echoing with thunderous applause. Yet it is possible that the greater part of the audience is genuinely moved; certain kinds of beauty, though apparent to all, may not be of the kind to arouse applause.

In Gaveaux, the chorus of prisoners: “What a splendid sky, how green the earth!” tries to express the same feeling. Alas! compared with Bee­ thoven’s chorus, it seems flat and prosaic indeed! Notice, too, how the French composer, until then circumspect in his use of the trombone, brings it in at this precise moment as if it were a mild and suave instrument. Let who can, explain this odd idea.

In the second part of the duet, in which Rocco tells Fidelio that they are going to dig the prisoner’s grave, Beethoven has written a curious syncopated figure for the winds, but its moaning accent and restless rhythm are perfectly adapted to the situation. This duet and the follow­ ing quintet contain very fine passages, some of which, in their writing for voices, suggest Mozart’s manner in the Marriage of Figaro.

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A vocal quintet with chorus closes this act. It is dark and somber, as it should be. Midway through, there appears a brusque, rather dry mod­ ulation, and a few voices stand out rhythmically from the mass, without giving a clear indication of what the composer had in mind. Indeed, it is the mystery hovering over this finale that makes it so intensely tragic. It ends in a piano expressing consternation and fear. The Paris public does not applaud; it cannot applaud a conclusion so alien to its habits.

Before the curtain rises for the next act, the orchestra plays a slow and lugubrious prelude, full of anguished cries, of sobbing and trembling, of heavy pulsating sounds. We are entering the realm of pain and tears.

Florestan is stretched out on his straw mat. We are about to witness his suffering and hear his voice in delirium.

Gluck’s orchestration for Orestes’ dungeon scene in Iphigénie en Tauride is fine indeed, but how Beethoven surpasses him here! Not only because he is a powerful symphonic composer and because no one can make the orchestra speak more eloquently than he, but also be­cause–it cannot be denied–his musical conception is stronger, grander, and incomparably deeper in its expressiveness. From the very first mea­sures, we sense that the unhappy wretch locked up in this cell must, on entering it, have abandoned all hope.

There he is. His heart-rending recitative, interspersed by the principal phrases of the preceding prelude, is followed by a cantabile, desolate and harrowing, of which the accompaniment in the woodwinds steadily in­ creases the sadness. The prisoner’s pain becomes more and more in­tense.

His mind wanders; he has been touched by the wings of death. Seized by a sudden hallucination, he thinks he is free; he smiles and tears come to his dying eyes. He thinks he sees his wife; he calls to her, and she replies. He is drunk with love and the joy of freedom.

Let others describe this sobbing melody, this quivering orchestra, this unbroken song by the oboe accompanying Florestan like the voice of his beloved wife, whom he believes he can hear. Let others describe the stirring crescendo and last cry of the dying man. I cannot. Let us only acknowledge here the masterly skill, the burning inspiration, the incan­descent flight of genius.

After his feverish attack, Florestan collapses and falls back on his mat. Enter Rocco and the trembling Leonore (Fidelio). The horror of this scene is weakened in the new libretto, where they merely clear out a cistern instead of digging the grave of a prisoner who is still alive. (You see what all these “improvements” lead to.) Nothing is more sinister than this famous duet, in which Rocco’s cold impassivity contrasts with Fi­delio’s heart-rending asides, where the dull murmur of the orchestra is comparable to the hollow sound of dirt falling on a

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coffin. One of my fellow music critics has very aptly compared this scene to that of the gravediggers in Hamlet. Can there be higher praise?

Beethoven’s gravediggers finish their duet without a coda, without a cabaletta, without any vocal outburst; the people in the pit also keep a strict silence. Too bad, isn’t it?

The following trio is more fortunate; it gets applauded, even though it too ends quietly. Moved by tender sympathy, the three characters sing dulcet melodies, supported naturally and effortlessly by the most har­ monious accompaniment. Nothing could show more elegance and at the same time sound more touching than the beautiful twenty-measure theme sung by the tenor. It is a song of the most exquisite purity; an expres­sion of what is most true, most simple, and most penetrating. Later this theme is taken up again, sometimes whole, sometimes in fragments, and after some bold modulations, it is led back into the original key with incomparable grace and skill.

The quartet with pistol is one long roll of thunder whose threat of violence keeps growing until it ends in a series of explosions. From the moment that Fidelio cries out: “I am his wife!” the musical interest merges with the dramatic. One is moved, carried away, overwhelmed without knowing whether these powerful emotions are being aroused by the voices, the instruments, or the miming of the characters and the action on stage, so complete is the composer’s identification with the situation–a situation he has depicted with stunning lifelikeness and prodigious energy.

The voices, calling to each other in burning challenges, always stand out above the orchestral tumult and cut through the rapid figurations in the strings, which are like the clamor of a crowd stirred by a thousand passions.

It is a miracle of dramatic music to which I know no counter­part in any master ancient or modern.

This splendid score has suffered enormous, lamentable damage from the change to the libretto. Because the action was taken back to the time before the invention of the firearm, Fidelio could not be equipped with a pistol; the young woman has to threaten Pizarro with an iron bar. This is a less dangerous weapon, especially for such a “man,” than the little tube with which her frail hand could strike him dead at the slightest move. Besides, the sight of Fidelio aiming the pistol at Pizarro’s face is a most effective piece of stage action. I can see Mme Devrient now, her arm trembling as she points the pistol at Pizarro, her face distorted by convulsive laughter.

There again, you see the result of all this tinkering with plays and scores to make them fit the supposed demands of a public that in fact demands

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nothing and would be well enough pleased if works were put before them just as the authors and composers had written them.

After the wonderful quartet, the couple–now left alone–sings a no less wonderful duet, in which boundless passion, joy, amazement, and exhaustion by turns find expression in music that cannot be described to anyone who has not heard it. What love! What ecstasies! What em­braces!

With what ardor these two beings cling to each other! Passion makes them stammer. Words tumble out of their trembling lips, they stagger, they are breathless–they love each other! Do I make myself clear? They love each other. What can this impetuous love have in com­mon with those insipid duets of couples joined in a mariage de conve­nance?

The last finale is a great choral ensemble in march rhythm, interrupted at first by episodic passages in slow tempo. The allegro then re­turns, growing ever livelier and richer in sonority until the end. Even the coldest and most uncooperative listeners are dazzled and swept along, first by the majesty, and then by the verve of this peroration. They ap­prove with a grudging air and say: “Well now, that’s better!” Seeing them applaud, I say likewise to them: “That’s better!” But the other parts of the score, which move them so little, are no less admirable on that account; without wishing to depreciate the value of this giant fi­nale, I must say that several of the preceding pieces are greatly superior.

Still, who knows but that the light may dawn sooner than we think, even for those whose hearts are now closed to this magnificent work of Beethoven’s, as they are also closed to the marvels of the Ninth Sym­phony, the last quartets, and the great piano sonatas of this same match­lessly inspired man.

Hector Berlioz (1803 – 1869): The Art of Music and Other Essays (A Traves Chants).

Translated and Edited by Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay. Bloomington/Indianapolis 1994.

Berlioz’s Fidelio-article was first published on 19th and 22nd May 1860 in the Journal des Débats.

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Unselfishness and generosity as women’s power strategy.

Christine Bauer-Jelinek

Only fairy-tales end with “and they lived happily ever after”. In real life this is where the tragedy begins, which can appear in two versions: The man surrenders to being ruled over by the “mother-figure” and lets her hold the sceptre, while he himself regresses to being a child. As a result his sexual interest in the woman is extinguished, since a man cannot desire his own “mother”. The woman also loses her sexual desire for the man, because he can’t remain for long attractive to her as a “little boy”. The woman has saved her husband because she didn’t want to lose him, but now she really does lose him. A painful realization.

The author lives and works in Vienna. Her field of activity is “coaching” and “management training” at the top level of economic and political management. She lectures and gives smposiums on “power and competence”.

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The second possibility is that by being rescued by his wife a man’s destiny cannot be fulfilled: he can’t finish a fight and can’t even win glory as a martyr. The shackles removed by his wife now bind him to the woman. So now the war he had to give up he wages against his wife. He continually wants to dissociate himself from her, and the woman becomes an enemy who puts an obstacle in the way of him fulfilling his life – in the way of freedom and development – the woman becomes an enemy in bed. By behaving in this way the man brings sorrow to his wife until either the relationship falls apart or one of them is destroyed by it.

If this happens the woman loses her husband, when what she really wanted was to save him and keep him for ever. Thus we can say that: Men are ground between two millstones: one the basic desire for the mother, protection and unconditional provision, the other the desire for freedom, danger, challenges and risks.

In that case can we not help anybody, or offer support? This contradicts our system of values and our concept of marriage – including the law of marriage which obliges the married partners to help maintain each other’s existence. Naturally nobody wants to lose a loved one. There are certainly situations in life when we must let our partner go down his or her own road, even if by doing so we lose them. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help them or support them. But if the woman crosses the narrow boundary between assisting and rescuing, then she becomes either an “over fussy mother” or a “dominating man”. This doesn’t mean that a woman can’t rescue a man or as many men as she feels like – it’s only her husband she may not rescue, since the power she has won in doing so ruins their relationship. In the light of this fact the question “Should a woman rescue her husband?” must be answered no.

Is it possible that women in the past were in possession of the profound knowledge that a husband who cannot liberate himself from danger is a lost husband anyway? If she dies, then the situation can be idealized. Because he’s been rescued the husband doesn’t have to feel limited. From the woman’s point of view her self-destruction will take place so that she can sever their relationship – due to his unsuitability – and leave him alone with his guilt.

For isn’t it a refined form of punishment that we will have the glory which in fact he desired so much? This is how we can call unselfishness a particularly cruel means of acquiring power.

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Summarizing this train of thought, we can declare the following: Within the traditional sexual roles the woman may rescue the man, but in doing so she will lose him as a husband, since she was an obstacle to his life (or death). A man must resolve his dangerous situations either alone or through friends and associates. If he doesn’t, he will die. If he is rescued by his wife, then both are destroyed within the marriage.

These statements will be uncomfortable for many people, and unacceptable for some. Interestingly it is the men, rather than the women, who know how to deal with it. My explanation is that women exercise their motherly power so unconsciously and regard it as so natural that they can hardly reflect on it. It is as hard for women to liberate themselves from their “untamed” motherly reflexes – which they apply without criticism to all in need – as it is for men to restrain their sexual reflexes – which make them want to pat every woman’s bottom.

The question is whether this division must always be so, whether we are tied for ever to these sexual roles. Men can fight and rescue women because they have the necessary biological equipment. Muscles, testosterone, and so on. Masculine women fighting with weapons – fists and swords – don’t however have these things to start with, so they have to substitute for them: women must remain virgins because they lose their strength as soon as they become sexually active – like Brünnhilde. The Amazon women had to lose a breast so they could pull the bow for the arrows, and had to use force to get men into bed with them.

Generally women kill using plots or poison, or get someone else to do it.

Knowing all this, we can now explain the drama that arises between the sexes. Beginning with Leonora’s first appearance the women – in their own interests – gradually move way from unselfishness towards active battle strategy. They conquer more and more of the men’s areas of power and take on their behaviour. All this has to happen if they want to break through the glass roof and penetrate the highest spheres of power. As soon as the women grasp this principle, it works wonders. For just as women can learn all branches of sport and the professions, so they can hold their own in intersyndicate battles or even hand-to-hand combat. And then they can rescue themselves or each other or men as well, and much more competently than was possible for Leonore.

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For the last thirty years men have been gradually “re-educated”. They have learned female ways of behaving, they discuss their feelings, they take care of their health and think of their security. They have learned empathy and how to solve conflicts by talking them through. Except these softys have come to realize that women don’t fall for them as much as was promised.

A softy is a good friend, a psychological litter bin, a daddy at home on child care benefit, but women find sexual excitement still in macho men. Tests have shown that the expected life span of “house husbands” instead of growing, like that of housewives, has sunk below the level of even that of working men.

Successful business women, business Amazons, first class sportswomen, women soldiers, hardworking factory women are not erotic. Fifty per cent of women in leading positions are not married. More and more relationships are falling through because the woman earns more than the man and has a higher ranking job. And it’s not only the men who don’t know what to do about the situation. Women are not happy with themselves, they lose interest in sex, and they don’t like going out in public too much, since their acceptance by society limps way behind social reality. According to opinion polls successful women look for more successful men, while men look for less successful women. Except that as the cabaret writer Bernhard Ludwig pointed out in his Guide to sexual dissatisfaction, this development cannot hold statistically. Because the more successful women there are the fewer positions remain for successful men. Hence something has to change if we don’t want an imbalance between the sexes to lead to an erotic catastrophe.

We can therefore sum up as follows: Change is possible: since there has been technological advance and widely used birth control men can learn women’s roles and women men’s.

Sexually specific behaviour is almost completely interchangeable, the only exception being pregnancy and birth – for the time being. Except that this produces a statistical problem: successful women seek men who are more successful. Men seek less successful women.

If we don’t want to fall back into the primitive roles of “strong man, weak woman”, two possible scenarios present themselves to us, and newer ones need to be discovered.

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1. The patterns of erotic stimulation and counter stimulation will swap poles. Men who are socially or physically weak will find strong women sexually attractive, and vice versa. However as these patterns lie rooted in very primitive areas of the brain, it’s not yet clear how this can work and how long this evolutionary step will last.

2. Professional and private life will become separate and two quite different ways of behaving will arise in these spheres. The behaviour of the sexes will resemble each other in the professional world, while in private life the male-female scheme will again become active. For this there will be a need for different dress codes, ceremonies of courtesy and patterns of communication. When this happens the fifty – fifty relationship will actually be two quarters plus two quarters. Neither can indulge completely in both his or her own behaviour pattern and also that of the other. For example a male and female child-carer are both feminine; a male and female soldier both masculine; in heterosexual love life this is the classic division; in homosexual love life it is as you like it.

Changes in the role of man and woman open up new fields of play.

New modes of behaviour become possible, and this is an irreversible development. But every change has its price. There will still be a need for creativity − experiment, error, learning – until both sexes can exhaust the whole range of possibilities.

This change of consciousness and behaviour still requires much joint effort from both men and women …if we don’t want the new freedom to become a new prison.

Christine Bauer-Jelinek: Rette den Mann – und du machst ein Kind aus ihm.

Opfertum und Edelmut als weibliche Machtstrategien. In: Leonore = Fidelio. Die Frau als Kämpferin, Retterin und Erlöserin im (Musik-) Theater. Hrsg. von Silvia Kronberger und Ulrich Müller. Anif/Salzburg 2004.

Marcel Dzama The Underground 2008 >> 62

Fidelio associations

Alois Brandstetter

Amnesty International is continually publishing long lists of political prisoners held captive in prisons around the world. Human rights are still being trampled underfoot all the time and the first casualty of war is always justice.

We are witnesses, helpless and impotent contemporaries, who perform operas or watch them. To find the real Fidelios is certainly more difficult…

Looking for an example to compare to the phrase “woman liberates unjustly imprisoned man” makes me think of the long heroic struggle of Winnie Mandela – a true “Eroica” – lasting years on behalf of her civil rights activist and anti-apartheid husband Nelson Mandela, who later became the state president of South Africa. After Mandela was released from prison, they both, of course, got divorced, and Winnie Mandela was accused of having committed crimes during her long struggle, after which she was sentenced.

Alois Brandstetter: Fidelio-Assoziationen. Eine Lesung. In: Leonore = Fidelio…

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Szilvia Rรกlik

Attila Fekete Zita Váradi Friedemann Kunder Tünde Szabóki