Rhapsodies

Well I had another night at the Seattle Opera last night. This time it was Beethoven‘s Fideleo and it was good.

I confess that before this week all I knew about Fideleo was one, the only opera Beethoven ever wrote, and two it was something about a woman working in a prison.

Obviously there were gaps in my knowledge. What Fideleo is about is a woman who infiltrates a prison in disguised as a young man to find her husband who is in prison as a political prisoner. Complications, like her bosses’ daughter falling in love with her, and the prison warden having a serious vendetta against her husband, occur. Obviously there is more to it than that but that pretty much sums it up.

While I certainly liked it, I don’t think this will ever be my favorite opera. Much as I love Beethoven’s work I don’t think the format of opera plays to his strengths. And as for the libretto… while I don’t expect every opera to end with a pile of corpses, the happy ending felt heavy handed and tacked on. (I kept expecting Marzelline, the jailer’s daughter, to hit Fideleo when she discovered she was really Lenore in  disguise).

But this is not the Seattle Opera’s problem. This was a incredible well performed production done in a modern dress which made it feel eerily topical.