Review of Leonore, Buxton Festival

Leonore is the original version of the opera Fidelio, which Beethoven created nine years after his original three-acter, and which we know better today.

So the case for doing the long one must surely be that there’s wonderful music in it that deserves to get a hearing. Festival artistic director (and conductor) Stephen Barlow believes that – he’s not the only maestro to think so, and he’s done it before – and he and director Stephen Medcalf also aver it has a better claim to work as drama.

I think they have a point. The later Fidelio always seems to lurch from domestic comedy to high-minded rescue drama too early on, and Beethoven’s original gave him more opportunity to develop the Jacquino-Marzelline-Leonore-Rocco relationship in its own right, and to do it in a half-comic, half-serious, Mozartian way.

There’s a duet for Marzelline and Jacquino (Jetzt, jetzt) which is very fine – as she measures up various noble prisoners for their dungeon garb – and a remarkable trio with Rocco which hints at dimensions of tragedy impending. Mir ist so wunderbar becomes a climactic pivot in its own right.

On the other hand, we get a duet for Marzelline and Leonore, with solo violin obbligato, which goes on a bit (and was not played particularly well on the first night); Komm’ Hoffnung is introduced by a less effective passage than Abscheulicher! in the later version; and the denouement is extended with a finale, allowing a crisis of confidence for the happy couple after O namenlose Freude!, which diminishes the effect of Don Fernando’s arrival and setting all to rights.

Still, on balance, the case for Leonore is proved. Medcalf has gone one better than that, though. He thinks the whole opera is a fantasy about Beethoven’s inner life. During the overture (Leonore no. 2, as used in 1805) we see the composer at his fortepiano, struggling with his Heiligenstadt predicament and his ear-trumpet and dreaming of a woman’s love; that violin obbligato is played by Leonore on a fiddle she happens to have with her; later, when Rocco is digging a grave in the dungeon, we’re among the detritus of the composer’s thwarted dreams. Then freedom for Florestan equals redemption for Ludwig: art and Das ewig Weibliche triumph together, and blow me, half the soldiers turn out to have been prisoners’ wives in disguise, and they’ve ALL come to free their guys. Girl power, eh?

Hmm – it’s pretty surreal in the end. But then, maybe that’s the story of the opera. The singers are a strong team, with young David Danholt making an extremely good impression as Florestan and Kirstin Sharpin bringing a big voice and control over most of it to Leonore. Hrólfur Sæmundsson sang Pizarro with some good tone and bad-guy relish (getting panto-style boos at the curtain call), and Scott Wilde’s emphatic Rocco was much appreciated (though a bit raw near the top of the range).

Of them all, I liked Kristy Swift’s feisty Marzelline most for her comic acting and flexible soprano, and Stuart Laing made a reasonable fist of the hapless Jacquino. Jonathan Best gave some gravity to Don Fernando.

Stephen Barlow drew generally excellent playing from the Northern Chamber Orchestra, whose sound fills this lovely small opera house ideally, and the chorus, with its large extra male contingent, sang very well (trainer Matthew Morley).