Social justice meets opera with Pacific Opera Victoria (POV)’s contemporary production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, which may just challenge your perceptions of the human condition.
Bogotá-raised multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Monica Hernandez has joined with director Wim Trompert and designer Nancy Bryant to create an on-set memorial to resistance and freedom fighters that is “extraordinarily expressive,” says conductor and POV founding artistic director Timothy Vernon. A projected screen will help create the backdrop for the performers, streaming images and scenes haunted by shadows and stark reminders of the costs of war.
“It sounds very dark, and in a way it is very dark,” says Vernon. “It is about the capacity of human beings to oppress one another.”
Although oppression is one of the central themes of this piece, so too are the ideas of freedom and individual responsibilities. Surrounded by soldiers and prisoners, one woman leads the charge against tyranny, disguising herself as a man so she can enter the prison where her husband is a political prisoner sentenced to death.
“In lesser hands, it might be just a sappy rescue drama,” says Vernon, “but in Beethoven’s hands, it becomes something monumental because he thought monumentally, and because his music has a reach and a vision and a strength that made it pretty much imperishable.”
The piece is performed in German, with surtitles that Vernon assures will be “just like going to see a movie with subtitles.” It’s also one of few operas that has both dialogue and song, although the dialogue has been cut down to a bare minimum for the benefit of those audience members who come to hear and enjoy the sublime music of Beethoven’s creative genius. Something perhaps less apparent to the audience as it is to the creative team rehearsing this piece is Beethoven’s complete lack of experience in composing for the theatre. In nine symphonies, five piano concertos, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets, the famous deaf composer produced only one opera.
“Beethoven didn’t really understand the voice deeply,” says Vernon. “He wrote for the voices as though they were instruments. It takes very strong voices and developed, mature technique to sing what he wrote.”
Tall orders for the leading voices of this production. Italian-Canadian soprano Aviva Fortunata makes her debut appearance with POV in the leading role of Leonore, disguising herself as Fidelio (which means faithful) in order to enter the secret dungeons to rescue her husband. Making his Canadian debut, American tenor Brent Reilly Turner takes on the role of the imprisoned Florestan.
“It’s not just about who is going to sing it well,” says Vernon, “but who is going to work well in an ensemble. Because it is an ensemble event and you need not just cooperation, but you need trust and reliance. Performers rely on each other on stage to a great degree and I think it’s important to try to find that harmony when you’re casting, when you’re putting the show together. We’ve had a very cooperative, positive, safe working space for people.”
There is the promise here of an experience that transcends language and culture, lifting its audience into the ideals of the human condition that so fascinated the German enlightenment philosopher in Beethoven. The young musician and his friends grew up in Bonn, a hotbed for the enlightenment movement of 18th-century Germany.
“This is a universal story,” says Vernon. “We’re trying to show that Beethoven is thinking about freedom, about democracy, about individual strengths, and that is very contemporary, too.”
Fidelio
Various times, Thursday, October 11 to Sunday, October 22
Various prices, Royal Theatre
rmts.bc.ca