This listing is for Beethoven Fidelio - Complete Opera VHS Video Tape Set.

Format: Classical, NTSC

Studio: Opera D'oro/EuroArts International

VHS Release Date: October 20, 1998 

Rated: NR - Not Rated

Number of tapes: 2

VHS Release Date: 1998

Run Time: 131 minutes 

Beethoven's only opera was recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival. Bernard Haitink conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In German. This production of Fidelio is traditional in style, which means that no alien concept is forced onto the story. The singing is mostly of the highest caliber, and Soderstrom is on top form both as singer and as actress. Haitink supports his cast with great care and well-chosen tempos. The convincing staging and acting make the drama fly by quickly. This is essential viewing for any opera lover!

One never fails to be moved by the great humanity of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, in which the wife of a political prisoner dresses as a man, hires on as a jailer in the prison where her husband is kept in a dungeon, and manages to save his life. What a pity Beethoven wrote only one opera. But what an opera it is.

This Glyndebourne Opera 'Fidelio' from 1979 preserves a marvelous naturalistic production directed by Sir Peter Hall and with Bernard Haitink leading the London Philharmonic. In the cast is one of the great spinto sopranos of the day, Elisabeth Soderstrom, who gives us a stirring performance both musically and dramatically. She thrills us in her big first act aria 'Komm Hoffnung.' (And it must be said that the four horns who accompany her are in good form, too, although one was a little concerned because they were a bit sour in the overture. Obviously they had settled in by the time 'Komm Hoffnung' came around. Indeed that is true of the orchestra which got off to a rocky start but soon righted themselves.) The supporting cast is excellent although I did not encounter very many familiar names besides the always reliable Elizabeth Gale as Marzelline. Ian Caley's Jacquino is suitably light and flighty. Curt Appelgren's Rocco, the head jailer, was really quite wonderful. He managed to make the seemingly inappropriate paean to wealth, 'Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben' tolerable. And in the dungeon scene he was both believable and musically stalwart. Robert Allman's Don Pizarro, dressed like a little Napoleon complete with tricorn, was a suitably hateful villain, and he brought to the role a resounding bass-baritone voice. It's not easy to make Pizarro's self-aggrandizing solos believable but Allman managed to do that.

The big surprise for me was the excellent Florestan of a singer I don't recall ever hearing of before, tenor Anton de Ridder. He was rather long in the tooth for the part; the booklet notes that at the time of this performance he had already been singing thirty years at the Karlsruhe Opera. But his voice and presentation reminded me of Jon Vickers' who, of course, was a standout in the role, and being compared to Vickers is great praise indeed.

The sets and costumes are appropriate to the period in which the opera was written, rather than to 16th-century Spain (where so many late 18th and early 19th century operas were set in order to avoid the state censors' wrath); this is quite acceptable because Bouilly's play, on which 'Fidelio' is based, was taken from a set of real-life events that happened during the French Revolution.

The 'Leonore No. 3' Overture is not played before Act II in this production and that is good. I've never understood the need or even the impulse for it to be played during a performance of 'Fidelio' except that it is wonderful music. But it does tend to give away the plot with the trumpet call announcing the arrival of the opera's deus ex machina in the form of the Minister who has Pizarro arrested and Florestan set free.

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