Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Beethoven: Fidelio

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Ludwig van Beethoven's one and only opera Fidelio (1814) is well represented in the discography. I have presented several historic recordings of it over the years, notably the 1961 Covent Garden production directed by Otto Klemperer and starring soprano Sena Jurinac and tenor Jon Vickers, as aired on Testament CD's (Sunday, June 9, 2013) and Karl Bohm's interpretation of Fidelio as produced at the Met in 1960, with the incomparable Birgit Nilsson as Leonore, opposite Vickers as Florestan. Tapes in the Met's archives were picked up for issue on Sony CD's. That historic Fidelio I presented on Sunday, September 25, 2011.

The esteemed conductor Sir Charles Mackerras is now deceased, so maybe that makes the Telarc CD release of his Fidelio in historically informed musical practice of historic interest in itself. That recording featured Czech soprano Gabriela Benackova and British tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson, backed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Edinburgh Festival Chorus. The Mackerras Fidelio went over the air on Sunday, October 18, 1998. Also historically informed are the reconstructions of Beethoven's earlier version of the opera from 1804, which he titled Leonore after the heroine. Two different recordings of Leonore I aired on two different Sundays, first in December of 1994, then in September of 2005.

The standard Fidelio was mounted at Glyndebourne in 2006. A live-in-performance recording of it I broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2009.

It's high time for a more contemporary take on Beethoven's "rescue opera." There was a production of Fidelio at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland in the Summer of 2010. It was duly recorded for Decca, again live in performance, with soprano Nina Stemme as Leonore and Germany's star tenor of our time Jonas Kaufmann as Florestan. Claudio Abbado conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Arnold Schoenberg Choir.