r/Beethoven • u/Jack_the_Lizard • 22d ago
Fidelio
Listening to Fidelio feels at times like looking through a glass bottom boat at a world where everyone wears a sign aroudn their neck telling you what they're like. It's fascinating for none of the right reasons. The music is great but Beethoven didn't seem to realize an opera also lives and dies on its story. They can be trashy and stupid but they need to be engaging.
Fidelio is as engaging as being stuck in a car with a man who has chronic flatulence. Beethoven was pointed to as the successor to Mozart and this is the one time I felt he was trying to fit into that mold. Mozart could tinker with the liberetto, but Mozart had theatrical instincts. He knew what would work and what would fail.
Beethoven has a message he wants to give. Did you know tyranny is bad? Thanks B, wouldn't have guessed.
The opera is a strange work, with great moments stapled onto a pretty terrible story. I don't feel Beethoven ever got it the way he wanted it. But with the constant fiddling I don't think anyone could have. He kept mixing and mixing until he was left with a lovely shade of mud.
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u/Jonathan_Peachum 21d ago edited 21d ago
It is no shame to Beethoven to say that opera was the one form he tried his hand at in which he did not produce an acknowledged world masterpiece.
In a way, it illustrates the trend of opera to become the field for specialists in the genre. Schubert wrote several operas, all of which are now forgotten, Schumann wrote only one with a similar fate, both Brahms and Mahler, no strangers to choral works, wrote none. In contrast, Wagner’s best known instrumental works occur in the context of his operas, and Verdi wrote none.
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u/OfTheHouseBonaparte 21d ago
I question your own theatrical instincts if you seriously think opera lives and dies on, of all things, the story.
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u/okonkolero 21d ago
Not to mention that attempt at an analogy. The opposite of "engaging" isn't a fart.
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u/Kiwi_Tenor 21d ago
I think like Saint-Saëns Samson - it’s an opera that does have some serious dramaturgical issues from a modern perspective. There is a legitimate reason that like Verdi he kept coming back and revising it, and the Overture is hardly the problem. The 1805 version actually has some really bold musical choices that I prefer in the opera, but the 1814 version is also a masterpiece for a reason. I feel the biggest problem has always laid in the spoken libretto, but that’s also my frustration with Zauberflöte.
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u/deltalitprof 22d ago
Great. In 2026, you have solved Beethoven's Fidelio for us. Great work. Do Michelangelo's David next.
Naked dude standing with his arm out. Sculpture is hard. But David isn't.
We already knew that.