Roll over Beethoven

If you want to see an opera director kicking a genius when they’re down — and I mean really sticking the knife in and giving it a good old twist around — Fidelio is usually a safe bet. It’s one of Beethoven’s few undisputed masterpieces in which he’s not in absolute command of his medium; instead, the sheer moral and emotional conviction of the music carries it through. Confronted with such blazing sincerity, the instinct (possibly defensive) of many modern directors seems to be to subvert, to undercut, to belittle. I haven’t seen a production of Fidelio this century that’s been content simply to help the work speak (and Fidelio does need some discreet help). It’s become normal to emerge from this most uplifting of operas feeling confused — even angry.

By that measure, the fact that Orpha Phelan’s new production at Longborough is merely frustrating counts as something of a success. Indeed, if Fidelio were a more conventional opera, it’d probably have worked rather well. We’re in the dehumanised future of sci-fi thrillers like Prometheus, all gloom, dully blinking lights and pulsing umbilical pipes and cables. Pizarro brandishes a hypodermic syringe and the prisoners are hooked up to a sinister machine. The designer Madeleine Boyd says that she wanted to create a ‘sense of imminent death’, and it’s as oppressive as Beethoven could have wished. Dressing the cast in utilitarian overalls also makes Leonore’s gender-swapping disguise plausible.

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She’s sung by Elizabeth Atherton with a fierce, concentrated integrity and a voice whose matte finish matches the production — starting to burn with tremulous warmth only after her final reunion with Florestan (Adrian Dwyer), which the pair act out with raw and wholly convincing emotion. This isn’t the most glamorous-sounding cast, though nothing in their singing contradicts the drama.