Fidelio
Feb. 15, 2025, 7 p.m.
Opernhaus Zürich
Falkenstrasse 1
8008 Zürich
Beethoven’s Fidelio – a work about the invincible power of hope – is particularly well suited to our times, which so urgently need to believe in the world-changing power of utopia. Disguised as a man and calling herself Fidelio (the faithful one), Leonore has employed herself as the assistant to the jailer in a state prison. It’s here that the prison’s governor is hiding her husband, intending to starve him to death slowly. When a minister comes to inspect the prison, the governor decides that the prisoner must die quickly. Leonore has to dig her own husband’s grave. At the moment of greatest danger, a trumpet signal announces the minister has arrived to save him.
Beethoven considered plans for an opera all his life, but only the story of the woman who risks her life to rescue her beloved husband from prison conformed to his vision of an idealistic operatic plot. But work on the piece was tedious, riddled with failures and discouraging setbacks. After the unsuccessful world premiere in 1805, the composer undertook two revisions of the work before it began its triumphal march across the world’s stages. But the troubles that plagued the work’s creation left their mark: Fidelio is not a self-contained, classically rounded work. It is a contradictory, fragile and edgy conglomerate of Singspiel, grand opera and oratorio. Beethoven’s music nonetheless succeeds in drawing the disparate elements together, turning the seemingly trivial libretto into a work with sharply drawn characters and poignant scenes. It is at once a hymn to the love of a husband and a song of praise to freedom, infused with revolutionary enthusiasm.
In the revival series of this production by Andreas Homoki, the American soprano Jennifer Holloway will make her debut in the title role. Her husband Florestan will be sung by Eric Cutler, who recently thrilled Zurich audiences as Siegmund in Die Walküre. At the podium of the Philharmonia Zürich is Krzysztof Urbański, the new Chief Conductor of the Bern Symphony Orchestra.
https://www.opernhaus.ch/en/spielplan/calendar/fidelio/2024-2025/
Kulturstelle contact: Ana Kitanovic email
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