Nicola Lisle hears how Fidelio is at the heart of a weekend offering plenty of inspiring intellectual events

Garsington Opera doesn’t normally do revivals. But this year, artistic director Douglas Boyd decided to revive the company’s 2009 production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, feeling that its themes of love, sacrifice and freedom from oppression tied in perfectly with the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.

John Cox — who directed the original production and is directing the revival — agrees with his thinking.

“There was a lot of oppression at the time it was written, much of it caused by Napoleon’s ravages through Europe, so it was I guess a familiar scenario to have the problem of political prisoners.

“The great engine of the piece is the power of conjugal love to overcome practically anything — tyranny, injustice, prison walls, even gender. Leonore poses as a man and gets away with it. I guess if she’d gone into the prison as a lady she wouldn’t have succeeded.”

The last Fidelio, of course, was at Garsington Manor; this time it will be at the Wormsley Estate, the company‘s home since 2011. How much has the change of venue affected the production?

“Funnily enough, there was a lot of space at the old Garsington, but it never looked like it because it was so enclosed. This one has a sense of wide open space and it was a problem to sense any kind of prison-like claustrophobia, so we added some scenery to give it as much of an enclosed feeling as possible.

“The other problem here is the same as it was at Garsington — the show starts when it’s still light, and it’s not until after you’ve had your dinner that you get a proper sense of theatrical darkness. Fortunately, the dungeon scenes are all after the interval, so when we need to be dark we can be dark!”

For John — who is making his Wormsley debut this year — the revival of Fidelio is a welcome opportunity to return to a piece he particularly likes.

“It’s really marvellous to come back to it. It’s an incredibly inspiring work. I can find stuff in it which was always there but I didn’t bring it out before, which often happens when you work on an opera revival. It’s a very good rousing piece of libertarian propaganda, and the passion that he writes with is so moving and so undeniable. I love it.”

Fidelio will also be at the heart of a Beethoven Weekend on July 5 and 6, which is Garsington’s main event commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.

The weekend will open with a symposium, hosted by James Naughtie and with Jeremy Paxman among the panellists. This will be followed by a performance of Fidelio.

Special events on the Sunday, under the title Peace in Our Time?, include a cello recital by Steven Isserlis interspersed with poetry readings by Samuel West (including unpublished pieces by Siegfried Sassoon), a masterclass by renowned mezzo Ann Murray, a celebrity cricket match and tours of the famous Getty Library.

The weekend will be brought to a close with the first-ever orchestral concert in the Opera Pavilion, featuring Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Beethoven’s incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont and his gloriously uplifting Symphony No.9 in D minor.

“There’s a lot on offer,” says John.It will be like a fairground, almost, but of an intellectual variety.”.

Fidelio
Wormsley Estate.
To July 13