The Stage

Fidelio

Published Thursday 6 July 2006 at 12:25 by David Gutman

Deborah Warner’s 2001 staging brings Fidelio into our own time. Jean Kalman’s set for Act I could be a Bosnian detention centre - neither the prisoners nor their gaolers are uniformed - with its naturalistic clutter of filing cabinets, metal cages and knocked doors.

Act II has a more timeless feel, basic backcloth, bare stage and only some noisily dripping water to intrude on action launched in near darkness. Prettifying snow falls in the warmly lit final tableau.

Taking over from Simon Rattle’s period forces, Mark Elder’s LPO offer finely honed textures without much forward thrust or rhetorical heft at key moments. The great Act I quartet is simply too slow. Nevertheless, by the end of the opera, Anja Kampe’s Leonore does acquire a radiant edge. This is her British stage debut as it is for Torsten Kerl, her faceless Florestan. Brindley Sherratt’s Rocco has the low notes as well as the acting skills on which this kind of reworking relies. Andrew Kennedy’s Jaquino is less impressive, but then he is often made to project from behind wire fencing, emotionally caged off from his Marzelline.

It is in that role that Lisa Milne, feisty veteran of 2001, offers the night’s most dynamic portrayal. The ‘jilted lover’, seated with her legs dangling into the orchestra pit, is pointedly unable to join in the general rejoicing at Leonore and Florestan’s reunion. Peter Coleman-Wright’s Don Pizarro and Henry Waddington’s Don Fernando are petty bureaucrats, patently anti-iconic. To the minor role of First Prisoner, the young tenor Nathan Vale brings pathos as well as beauty of timbre, a potential star.