Florestan       Geraint Dodd
Leonore         Susan Stacey
Rocco           Paul Hudson
Marzelline      Denise Mulholland
Pizarro         Mark Glanville
Jacquino        Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Don Fernando    Simon Wilding

ETO Chorus and Orchestra

Conductor       Andrew Greenwood
Director        Robert Chevara

Translation     David Pountney (I think the one used at the ENO)

English Touring Opera (ETO) normally refreshes the parts the WNO and
Glyndbourne Touring Opera do not reach, with productions suitable for small
houses in smallish places. The Peacock Theatre in London was packed for
this one, though.

David Pountney's translation is prosaic, and so was this production. There
was some press about the singers visiting a prison, and the programme
included quotes from the Beirut hostage Brian Keenan, whose experience must
be as close to Florestan's as anyone who has survived such a thing. But the
performance was generally understated, verging on wooden. In particular,
Mark Glanville as Pizarro simply wasn't furious or threatening. Denise
Mulholland as Marzelline looked charming in Elizabeth Bennett kit, with
curls, but acted like a poker. Susan Stacey was heroic as Leonore, though,
delivering a suitably intense Abscheulicher. Geraint Dodd as Florestan was
passionate, with some exciting moments but a lot of unsteadiness in
between. (Almost all the cast was anything but English.)

Simon Wilding was awfully young as Don Ferrando. But then Don Fernando is
totally implausible, even more so because he wrote the story. (I once
recycled Fidelio as a short story as a wedding present for a friend, and
all I could do with Don Fernando was to make his sacrifice Don Pizarro
because of outside pressure, and because Pizarro hadn't paid him his cut of
the pelf.)

The chorus of ten was extrememly effective. The prisoners' chorus in act I
was very moving (as it should be), and the final ensemble was likewise
powerful in spite of the small number of voices.

Robert Chevara also directed the production of Radamisto currently on in
the London Handel Festival. I'm not sure that he's got any characteristic
style at all, but as in Radamisto, the production was reasonably well
thought through, with consistent characterizations and not too much
concept. The brutality of the prison and its political context was evoked
mainly by the thuggery of Jacquino and Don Pizarro, and by the dreary
setting and the griminess of the prisoners. (Marzelline didn't get together
with Jacquino at the end, but was totally destroyed.) One striking gesture,
which came too late to make any difference, was that the chorus at the end
entered the prison with pictures of the disappeared like the Madres del la
Plaza de Mayo.

In a way the vagueness worked well, because Fidelio is about the power of
love. It leaves a space to insert the form of oppression you fear most, so
that you can identify most closely with the triumph of Leonore over it.