Word: fidelio
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...face of it, conductor Daniel Hathaway seemed to have limited his ambition to a formal concert performance without dialogue. Actually he failed to resist the temptation of doing Fidelio as a stage production as well...
...music wonk predicted that "this was the year they would do Gotterdammerung on a card table." He wasn't far off. Saturday night the Music Club mounted what was billed as a concert performance of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio...
From the beginning this project suffered from delusions of grandeur. Fidelio is traditionally a work of which even professionals are terrified. Beethoven was not one to let the physical limitations of the human voice restrict his compositional imagination, and Fidelio contains some of the most fiendishly difficult vocal and instrumental part-writing in the whole operatic literature...
...doing he combined the worst of both alternatives. Bass David Ripley kept the audience informed with bits of plot summary between musical numbers. Fidelio's typical rescue-opera plot was ridiculous distilled into narrative prose and recited with a straight face. Furthermore, Hathaway had his soloists marching on and off stage, simulating the enrtances and exits of a stage performance. These movements were ill-planned, ill-timed and meaningless...
BEETHOVEN: FIDELIO (2 LPs; Nonesuch). A less grandiose effort at another demanding opera is on the whole more satisfying. Beethoven's only opera draws much of its beauty from a succession of duets, trios and quartets; and all hands, under the direction of Carl Bamberger with Hamburg's Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra, are nimble, experienced ensemble singers. As Leonore, Gladys Kuchta reaches everything but the heights of Abscheulicher!; Julius Patzak, who had been singing for 35 years when this record was made, still sounds fresh and sturdy as Florestan; the best performance on the record is Melita Muszely...