Session 4: Excerpts

LISTEN

Broadcast (11/13/1936)
4 excerpts: total run time ~ 16 minutes
One day after the ribbon cutting that opened the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge to cars, history of another sort was being made two miles away inside the Opera House. Fritz Reiner conducts one of the most significant broadcast performances of the era.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  DIE WALKÜRE
  (In German)

  Music and libretto by Richard Wagner

  War Memorial Opera House
  November 13, 1936 (Broadcast)

  CAST
  Brünnhilde                          Kirsten Flagstad
  Sieglinde                             Lotte Lehmann
  Siegmund                           Lauritz Melchior
  Wotan                                   Friedrich Schorr
  Hunding                               Emanuel List

  Conductor                         Fritz Reiner
  Director                               Armando Agnini

  Clip 1: The Valkyrie Brünnhilde gives her battle cry and announces to her father, Wotan, that Fricka approaches.

  Clip 2: As she and Siegmund flee, Sieglinde is frightened and believes she hears the horns of her husband, Hunding, and his kinsmen chasing them.

  Clip 3: The divine Valkyrie appears before Siegmund. She answers his inquiries about the fate of fallen heroes in Valhalla.

  Clip 4: Sieglinde awakens and is filled with terror as Siegmund prepares to battle Hunding. Brünnhilde attempts to intercede on Siegmund’s behalf.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.

  Original audio transfer and restoration by Ward Marston.

• Listener Response #1

  
  Die Walküre, with Flagstad-Lehmann-Melchior-Schorr-List on stage and Reiner in the pit: an assembly of such artists for the 1936 performances of Die Walküre says more about Gaetano Merola and San Francisco Opera than the most eloquent or over-the-top promotional material could begin to suggest. The first excerpt we hear begins with commentary by Marcia Davenport, who explains exactly what makes this Walküre so special. Davenport herself is an interesting personage. The daughter of soprano Alma Gluck and stepdaughter of violinist Efrem Zimbalist (Gluck’s second husband), Davenport’s 1932 book Mozart was—incredibly, coming 141 years after his death—the first American biography of the composer. Just as incredibly, it remains in print. Davenport spent time as a music critic and, a native New Yorker, provided commentary for Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Thus she was already known when she introduced Act II of San Francisco Opera’s Walküre, but she was on the verge of greater celebrity, for that year she also published her first novel, Of Lena Geyer, whose heroine is an opera star. Davenport may not be read widely today, but in her time she achieved fame as a novelist, in particular for The Valley of Decision, a 1942 opus that went on to become a motion picture starring Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, and other Hollywood luminaries—a cast, in its own way, as impressive as the Walküre cast she lauds.
  
  

  Larry Rothe writes about music for the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances. Visit www.larryrothe.com.

• Listener Response #2

  
  In the introduction to this clip, author and critic Marcia Davenport touts Kirsten Flagstad and Lotte Lehman—Brünnhilde and Sieglinde, respectively, in the 1936 S.F. Opera production of Die Walküre—as “the two greatest living Wagnerian sopranos.” It’s hard to believe that at the time the Norwegian Flagstad was just four years removed from her very first Wagner role (Isolde in Oslo) and had only in the previous year, 1935, sung her first Walküre Brünnhilde, a part that, according to her count, she performed 77 times (nothing, however, compared to her 182 Isoldes). The power, expressiveness, sonority, and authority of Flagstad’s voice stopped me in my tracks as I listened, allowing me to hear what so electrified audiences as she exploded into superstardom beyond Scandinavia in the mid-1930s through her appearances at Bayreuth, the Met, and S.F. Opera.
  
  

  Mark Burford is a San Francisco Opera contributor and R.P. Wollenberg Professor of Music at Reed College. His research and teaching focuses on late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German concert music and twentieth-century popular music in the United States, with particular focus on African American music after World War II. 

• Listener Response #3

  
  Wagner repertoire at San Francisco Opera went unheard on the airwaves until 1936, when radio listeners were treated to a single act of Die Walküre with an ensemble of celebrated Wagner specialists. “Streaming the First Century” includes a portion of the introduction offered to the radio audience, spoken by writer Marcia Davenport, whose notably musical delivery and pristine enunciation give pleasure as she waxes ecstatic—not without reason—regarding “the finest cast for Die Walküre that could be assembled today.” (She is mistaken, however, in identifying the performance’s Sieglinde, Lotte Lehmann, as a dramatic soprano; Beethoven’s Leonore and Strauss’s Dyer’s Wife excepted, Lehmann sang exclusively spinto and full lyric repertoire.)

  These excerpts begin with the title role’s notorious difficult battle cry. Like virtually all Brünnhildes, Kirsten Flagstad—then in her absolute prime vocally—lacks a trill, but she does exhibit her usual exceptional intonation, along with an incomparable solidity in the middle voice that is crucial in all the Walküre Brünnhilde’s music (she does take the easy way out by singing “Hojotoho!”’s famous high Bs and Cs staccato, rather than as written, with portamento). At the same time, Flagstad invariably sings clear text, projecting all the youthful Valkyrie’s energy as she greets Wotan and describes the approach of the formidable Fricka.

  The next excerpt presents the distraught Sieglinde, who’s fleeing from her husband Hunding with Siegmund, her brother (he’s also her lover—as musical satirist Anna Russell famously quipped, “You can do anything in opera as long as you sing it”). Wagner gives the guilt-ridden, physically spent Sieglinde a harrowing hallucination scene. With terror palpable in every phrase, Lotte Lehmann is overwhelming here. With the simple question “Wo bist du, Siegmund?” (“Where are you, Siegmund?”), she rends the listener’s heart. Lehmann can create aching intimacy while still maintaining full, rounded tone on the words “leuchtender Bruder” (“radiant brother”). She frequently gives the impression of tears in the voice, but this only enhances her unfailingly beautiful, deeply touching singing.

  In a portion of the soprano/tenor scene known as the “Todesverkündigung” (“Annunciation of Death”), Flagstad’s Brünnhilde meets her match in the heldentenor to end them all, Lauritz Melchior. At the time, the two were widely regarded as opera’s most celebrated Wagnerian partnership. As one can hear, their voices simply belonged together, equaling each other in beauty, size, tonal depth, and technical security. here offering solemn dignity, in a voice of contralto-like richness, while Melchior is at his most nobly heroic.

  A portion of the Act II finale finds Lehmann’s Sieglinde even more terrified, communicating with an immediacy that makes a stunning impact more than 80 years after San Francisco thrilled to this characterization. In addition to a few phrases from Melchior, we also hear (in the distance) the Hunding of yet another renowned Wagnerian, bass Emanuel List, with whom Lehmann and Melchior had previously collaborated in a definitive recording of Walküre’s first act under conductor Bruno Walter. On the podium in San Francisco is Fritz Reiner, one of his generation’s most probing and musically exacting Wagner interpreters. Exuding authority in the pit, he propels the drama with spectacular theatricality and incisiveness, making a devastating impact at the moment when Hunding’s spear kills Siegmund.

   

  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Listener Response #4

  
  Act II of Walküre, paced with leisurely majesty by Fritz Reiner in 1936, gives us the chance to hear three absolute legends of Wagnerian singing, in parts still closely identified with their special gifts: three of Wotan's children, two mortal and one (for the moment) immortal. Kirsten Flagstad's clean, effortless-sounding traversal of Brünnhilde's high-lying entrance music confirms one pillar of her reputation; her uncanny solidity and ease in the later Annunciation of Death—almost in contralto territory range-wise—drives home another. In total contrast is Lotte Lehmann's Sieglinde, with detailed verbal infections pulsing through a golden timbre almost so suffused with passion as to leave Wagner's pitch markings behind. Lauritz Melchior's uniquely powerful baritonal heft and color remains the standard to which any Siegmund faces comparison.

  My Wagner-loving grandfather ensured that my then-teenaged mother's first operatic experiences included Flagstad and Melchior—in this opera, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Tristan.

  Critic and lecturer David Shengold resides in New York City. He regularly writes for Opera News, Opera, Opéra Magazine, Opernwelt and many other publications. He has taught courses on opera and literature at Williams, Mount Holyoke and Oberlin Colleges. He has done program essays for companies including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, ROH Covent Garden, and the Wexford and Glyndebourne festivals.

• Listener Response #5

  
  One day I was talking about this astonishing broadcast with Robert Tuggle, the director of the Metropolitan Opera Archives for many years. His remarkable book, The Golden Age of Opera, ends with Kirsten Flagstad’s Met Debut in 1935, and the time of his death he was working on a biography of her. In the middle of our  conversation he suddenly stopped, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then said, “This broadcast is the perfect example in sound of the differences between the Apollonian and the Dionysian approach to singing.” He was right. Both Flagstad (Brünnhilde) and Lotte Lehmann (Sieglinde) were great artists who conveyed all the emotion and drama of their roles, but they could hardly have been more different in their approach, with Flagstad being more Apollonian and Lehmann, Dionysian.

  Flagstad prized singing correctly and beautifully, she brought a harmonious balance and control to her performances. Reviews often mentioned that she had great poise on stage and moved very little, but when she did, her movements had great impact. Critics wrote of her nobility and utter simplicity in performance and how deeply moving that was. Lehmann, on the other hand, was the opposite. She seemed utterly spontaneous, totally possessed by every instant of the drama, surrendering to her character’s emotions. She was always ready to sacrifice a perfectly sung musical phrase in favor of more vividly conveying the depth of a character’s soul to the audience.

  It’s surprising that Flagstad and Lehmann only sang together in the same opera three times in their entire careers: twice here in San Francisco (November 13 and 22, 1936) and once in Milwaukee with the Chicago Opera a month later (December 14, 1936). An incident at the performance in Milwaukee illustrates a more personal side of the Apollonian/Dionysian differences between the singers. The day after that Walküre Lehmann wrote to a friend how hurt she was that before the performance Flagstad had told her it had been a while since she had done Sieglinde but she would be singing it again soon, so she planned to stand in the wings and watch Lehmann during Act I. Lehmann complained that, even though Flagstad had said she would be watching her, afterward Flagstad never said a word about her performance, not even a bit of criticism. What Lehmann never knew was that Flagstad was so embarrassed by what she saw as Lehmann’s flagrant public exhibitionism that she simply could not face her.

  As grateful as I am to have this broadcast of Act II, I can’t help missing Act III. What must it have been like to hear Flagstad pass the pieces of Siegmund’s sword to Lehmann and then Lehmann’s ecstatic response?

  
  Paul Thomason has combined a lifelong passion for music, his decades of experience in publishing, and his delight in storytelling to create a unique voice in writing and lecturing about opera. In addition to writing regularly for the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Aspen Music Festival and other companies in the US and Europe, he is also a regular guest on the award-winning podcast Aria Code and the London Wagner Society’s Zoom series.

• Synopsis

  
  Note: Die Walküre is the second of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. In Das Rheingold, prelude to the cycle, the Nibelunger Alberich steals the power-endowing ring forged from the Rheingold. Wotan, in turn, wrests it from Alberich but delivers it to the giant Fafner. Wotan has begotten nine immortal Valkyries who lead fallen heroes to Valhalla to fight the hordes of Alberich. He also begets the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, in union with an earth woman. It is their story that forms the subject of Die Walküre.

  ACT I

  Siegmund, driven into Hunding's hut by a terrible storm, is confronted by Sieglinde, Hunding's wife. Hunding, returning, observes the likeness between the two, and learns that Siegmund is the son of Walse, his mortal enemy. Sieglinde, who has conceived a passionate love for Siegmund, pours a sleeping potion in Hunding's goblet. She tells Siegmund her story of abduction and forced marriage to Hunding and of the sword, visible where it has been plunged into an ash tree by a one-eyed warrior, destined for him with strength to pull it forth. Comparing stories they find themselves to be brother and sister as well as lovers. Both are children of Walse who had thrust the sword, Nothung, into the tree for their deliverance. Siegmund tears the sword from its ashen sheath and clasping Sieglinde in his arms, carries her passionately away

  ACT II

  Wotan, who has decreed death for Hunding, so instructs Brünnhilde. But Fricka, his wife and guardian of the marriage vow, in a stormy scene, avows that punishment should be visited upon Siegmund and Sieglinde guilty of adultery, and compels him to swear he will not protect his son. Wotan then commands Brünnhilde to protect Hunding and lead Siegmund to Valhalla. Brünnhilde vainly pleads Siegmund's cause. Siegmund and Sieglinde arrive fleeing from Hunding's vengeance. While Siegmund stands guard over the exhausted Sieglinde, Brünnhilde appears and, moved by his devotion, promises him victory despite Wotan's command. Hunding is heard approaching and Siegmund rushes to meet his attack. Wotan appears and with a stroke breaks his sword to splinters. Hunding thrusts Siegmund through the breast and in turn is killed by a scornful wave of Wotan's hand.

  ACT III

  Brünnhilde implores aid for Sieglinde from the assembling Valkyries. But fearing the wrath of Wotan none dare offer it. Brünnhilde, giving Sieglinde the fragments of Siegmund's sword, bids her seek refuge in the forest wherein Fafner guards the ring there to await the birth of her expected child who shall be named Siegfried and conquer all. The outraged Wotan appears and sorrowfully announces his punishment of the disobeying Brünnhilde. Divested of her divinity she shall sleep on the mountain to become the bride of the first man who finds her. But he will build about her a magic circle of fire so that none but a hero may awaken her.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.

LISTEN

Audience recording (October)
5 excerpts: total run time ~ 8 minutes
Longtime General Director Kurt Herbert Adler brings lively tempi to Mozart’s comedy, inspiring the cast to dazzling vocal moments, including a fiercely dramatic interpretation of the aria “Come scoglio” by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  COSÌ FAN TUTTE
  (In German)

  Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte

  War Memorial Opera House
  October 1960 (Audience recording)

  CAST
  Fiordiligi                       Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
  Dorabella                    Katherine Hilgenberg
  Dorabella                    Mary Costa
  Ferrando                     Richard Lewis
  Guglielmo                  Frank Guarrera
  Don Alfonso              Paul Schoeffler
  
  Conductor                 Kurt Herbert Adler
  Production                Paul Hager

  Clip 1: Overture

  Clip 2: After making a wager with Don Alfonso about the fidelity of their fiancées, the three men toast with confidence that they will prevail. 

  Clip 3: Fiordiligi and Dorabella admire miniature portraits of their fiancees and sing of their devotion to them.

  Clip 4: Despina advises Fiordiligi and Dorabella to embrace the absence of their boyfriends. Just as men not to be trusted to be constant, she says, so too should the sisters pursue their own pleasure while the men are away. 

  Clip 5: As the strangers (Guglielmo and Ferrando in disguise) pursue the sisters and appeal to their pity, Fiordiligi declares that her love for her boyfriend is unwavering unto death.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.

• Listener Response #1

  
  Così fan tutte” (often translated as “All Women Are Like That”) was not performed by San Francisco Opera until 1956, so it was fairly new to the Company’s repertoire when this bootleg recording was captured by an audience member in 1960. Despite the fidelity issues, it’s fascinating to hear this fine cast. Legendary impresario Kurt Herbert Adler was not a noted Mozartian, but he leads a stylish performance. Hearing the end of the men’s trio (Clip 2), I noted with a cynical smile that even 60 years ago audiences tended to listen with their eyes, and would interrupt even the most delightful music with applause when they saw the scenery beginning to move. [Stage directors: can you please help avoid that?]

  I always marvel in appreciation when hearing Mozart’s elegant construction at the end of the Act I duet for Fiordiligi and her sister Dorabella (Clip 3). The mezzo Dorabella holds a long note while the soprano Fiordilgi bounces her vocal line around it. Then a change of harmonic context allows them to switch musical roles, with Fiordiligi now holding a much higher note while Dorabella eagerly does the bouncing.

  Soprano Mary Costa as Despina, who was by that point in her career already famous for her film role as the voice of Aurora in Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959), sounds lovely here in her 18th-Century version of a feminist aria (Clip 4), urging her mistresses not to let men get the best of them.

  In Clip 5 the elegant Elizabeth Schwarzkopf digs in with surprising vigor, not hesitating to use an almost guttural “chest voice” on the low notes at the beginning of the aria “Come scoglio” (“like a rock”). She aggressively navigates the wide vocal leaps Mozart uses to express Fiordiligi’s steadfast determination to resist any temptation toward infidelity. The dramatic intensity in her performance makes me really wish I’d been there!

  Could I say "Women's Lib"?

  Dr. Clifford “Kip” Cranna is Dramaturg Emeritus of San Francisco Opera.

• Listener Response #2

  
  Conductor Kurt Herbert Adler takes a brisk yet flexible tempo for the overture and the opening trio for the men, showcasing the ensemble’s precision and variety of dynamics. He refrains from hammering out the orchestral version of what will later be sung as “CO – SI FAN TUT-TE.”

  We hear the fast section of the ladies’ opening duet, where the two sisters trade off tricky leaping arpeggios and long held notes, nearly blurring their identities. Versatile contralto Katherine Hilgenberg, a mainstay at SFO for several years, displays a rich and powerful sound, while Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s slender soprano is often drowned out.

  The maid Despina generally has lots of stage of business to navigate, often in disguise, all while singing nimble music. In a brief bit of her first aria, we hear some of Mary Costa’s agile singing. It’s a pleasure to note that her tone is warmer than many soubrette Despinas, but remember that Costa was a wonderful singing actress. The year before, she had voiced Disney’s animated Sleeping Beauty, and would later be named a “Disney Legend.”       

  In Fiordiligi’s lengthy aria “Come scoglio,” Mozart uses an antiquated opera seria form to emphasize the character’s old-fashioned, classic stance. The aria is difficult—supposedly Mozart wrote the leaps and low notes to make fun of the first interpreter of the role, who was also librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s mistress—and we hear Schwarzkopf struggling, with unattractive and growling low notes, compromised vowels, and a pronounced quiver. Yet her breath control is admirable, and she handles the coloratura writing with great flexibility.

   

  Judith Malafronte (mezzo soprano) has sung with opera companies, orchestras, oratorio societies, and early music groups throughout the world. Holding degrees from Vassar College and Stanford University, she has recorded for major labels in a broad range of repertoire and writes regularly for Opera News, Early Music America magazine, and other print and online outlets. After fifteen years on the faculty at Yale University, she now teaches voice in the Historical Performance department at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. 

• Listener Response #3

  
  I can honestly say I have never heard the overture and subsequent ensembles played and sung so fast! It amazed me how well the singers did, especially the men in keeping it together. It brought an excitement to the work. In contrast, the beginning of “Come Scoliglio” was one of the slowest, but the great Elizabeth Schwarzkopf handles it like a champ. All in all, it made for an interesting listen of one of the great Mozart Operas.

  
  Kenneth Overton is lauded for blending his opulent baritone with magnetic, varied portrayals that seemingly “emanate from deep within body and soul.”  Kenneth Overton’s symphonious baritone voice has sent him around the globe, making him one of the most sought-after opera singers of his generation. Amidst performing, Kenneth serves as co-founder and artistic director of Opera Noire of New York, a performing arts organization created to empower African-American artists to reach their full creative potential in a creative supportive environment.

• Listener Response #4

  
  In this performance, it must have given San Francisco Opera general manager Kurt Herbert Adler immeasurable joy to mount the podium for the ebullient overture, knowing that he would be spending the next three hours conducting an ensemble of singers so eminently suited to Così fan tutte. All six singers possess the necessary vocal equipment, as well as an affinity for the style.

  These excerpts give a tantalizingly brief glimpse of the three gentlemen: English tenor Richard Lewis, American baritone Frank Guarrera, and German bass-baritone Paul Schoeffler. Singing to Adler’s exceptionally brisk tempo, this group unites for an unusually hearty, full-voiced delivery of the final section of the opera’s opening scene. The audience is already enjoying the opera so much that they applaud well before the music stops!

  Essential to this opera is a perfect match of timbre and phrasing between the two sisters, who share no fewer than three duets. The first of these is excerpted here, with the most celebrated Fiordiligi of her generation, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, singing opposite the Dorabella of San Francisco Opera favorite Katherine Hilgenberg. In the duet’s buoyant second section, the two project the giddy high spirits of the moment deliciously. Hilgenberg, usually identified as a contralto, offers a much richer voice than is generally heard in her role today, but she balances her sound expertly when in close harmony with Schwarzkopf.

  Adler adopts another surprisingly brisk tempo in Despina’s first aria. A singer who a few years later in San Francisco would move successfully into full lyric roles (Violetta, Marguerite, and Nedda among them), American soprano Mary Costa anticipates that development here. In a role normally assigned to soubrette voices, she never pecks at the music but sings it with substantial, notably attractive tone. Her style is perhaps a little outmoded in its employment of portamento, but she uses it with relish and the overall effect is actually delightful.

  In all of Schwarzkopf’s many Così performances—whether in San Francisco, Chicago, Milan, or Vienna—she invariably stunned audiences with her commanding traversal of Fiordiligi’s vocally daunting showpiece aria, “Come scoglio.” On this occasion, she sings the lowest notes almost too aggressively for her voice’s own good, but she has the aria’s vast range confidently in hand and fearlessly negotiates one treacherous phrase after another. Insisting that she and her sister will never yield to the wooing of the two foreigners (their disguised fiancés), this Fiordiligi is stupendously fierce. Schwarzkopf brings to the music flexibility, polish, and above all, a musicianship that can only come from long experience in the role.

  
  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Listener Response #5

  
  In the final lines of his 1819 “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” English poet John Keats wrote: Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty,—That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  Having taught an entire college course on Così fan tutte, it has always been a bit tricky to square Keats’s convictions, however admirable, with an opera in which Mozart sets one dissembling ruse after another to the most sensually glorious music. Immediately after we luxuriate in Don Alfonso, Fiordiligi, and Dorabella’s ravishing trio “Soave sia il vento,” in which the sisters wish their soldier-lovers protection as they head off to a fake war, the Don breaks the spell and chuckles to himself, and to us: “I’m not a bad actor.” In the excerpts from the S.F. Opera’s 1960 production, we hear this expressive unreliability in Guglielmo and Ferrando’s anachronistic toast to “the God of Love”; in Fiordiligi and Dorabella’s suspiciously gaudy embellishment of “Amore”; in Despina’s sermon that women should fight fire with fire when it comes to men’s duplicity; and in “Come scoglio,” Fiordiligi’s don’t-speak-too-soon vow of steadfastness. Beauty, especially when love is concerned, is persistently untrustworthy in Così.

  Which doesn’t nullify the music’s beauty. “Come scoglio,” sung in the 1960 production by one of the twentieth century’s greatest Mozartian sopranos, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, is a vivid illustration of how Mozart composed with the voices of specific singers in mind. In the case of this rondò—a designated show-stopping aria that marks an emotional climax as the prima donna contemplates her dramatic situation—Mozart, like his contemporary opera composers, consciously sought to showcase the vocal assets of Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, the A-list Italian soprano who debuted the role of Fiordiligi. For her Susanna in the Vienna premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart wrote two substitute arias tailored to her strengths. Ferrarese had an expansive range, including an unusually powerful chest register, and she specialized both in coloratura and in singing huge leaps, or cantar di sbalzo, that showed off the penthouse and the basement. Mozart provided the latter in ample supply in “Come scoglio” and Schwarzkopf matches Ferrarese note for note. The aria also demonstrates Mozart’s attention to character detail. The contrast between “Come scoglio” and the rustic, country dance feel of Despina’s aria is appropriate for their respective high-flown and earthy sentiments while also communicating the disparate class positions of an elevated lady and her streetwise servant.
  
  

  Mark Burford is a San Francisco Opera contributor and R.P. Wollenberg Professor of Music at Reed College. His research and teaching focuses on late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German concert music and twentieth-century popular music in the United States, with particular focus on African American music after World War II. 

• Synopsis

  
  ACT I

  Don Alfonso, the elderly cynic discussing the constancy of women with Ferrando and Guglielmo, involves them in a wager to test the virtue of their respective fiancées Dorabella and Fiordiligi. Setting the plot in motion, Don Alfonso visits the girls at their seaside garden, telling them the men have been ordered to the front, and soon the young officers enter to bid the girls a sad farewell.

  The pert maid Despina cynically advises the lamenting ladies to console themselves with other suitors, and in disgust Dorabella and Fiordiligi depart. This gives Don Alfonso an opportunity to enlist Despina as an ally in his attempt to win the wager, and the two plot to introduce Ferrando and Guglielmo disguised as Albanians to the unsuspecting girls. The ladies, however, are unreceptive to their new suitors and leave in high dudgeon, much to the delight of the men who are now confident of winning the wager.

  The grief-stricken sisters alone in their garden are again interrupted by the Albanians, who, rejected, have apparently taken poison. Moved by such obvious devotion, Dorabella and Fiordiligi relent a bit as Don Alfonso and Despina run for a doctor. Despina returns dressed as a doctor and with a giant magnet restores the two men to health.

  ACT II

  Despina's urgings persuade the ladies to amuse themselves with the Albanians. The two men with a band of musicians serenade the girls, and Guglielmo, encouraged by Despina and Don Alfonso, earnestly woos Dorabella and gives her a pendant. Ferrando has less success with Fiordiligi, but upon his departure she confesses that his wooing has moved her. Comparing notes, Guglielmo is reassured, but Ferrando is distressed when he is confronted with his own miniature secured from Dorabella. On their terrace, Dorabella and Fiordiligi admit to having followed Despina's advice, but Fiordiligi, full of misgivings, insists they must don uniforms and join their fiancés at the front. As she contemplates Guglielmo's sword, Ferrando rushes in threatening to kill himself with it unless she vows her love. Fiordiligi yields as Don Alfonso calms the irate Guglielmo.

  Don Alfonso and Despina prepare the hall for a double wedding. The couples are about to have their marriages legalized by a notary (the disguised Despina), when the officers are announced. Panic-stricken the girls push their Albanian lovers into another room, and greet Ferrando and Guglielmo who reappear in uniform. The men reveal their disguise to Dorabella and Fiordiligi and accept their apologies. With everything forgiven, the lovers are re-united and all join in a philosophic finale.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.

LISTEN

Audience recording (September/October)
4 excerpts: total run time ~ 9 minutes

Amy Shuard’s relentless intensity and vocal endurance as Elektra make this 1966 performance, which also features Regina Resnik as Klytämnestra and Thomas Stewart’s Orest, irresistible and impossible to forget.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  ELEKTRA
  (In German)

  Music by Richard Strauss
  Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

  War Memorial Opera House
  September/October 1966 (Audience Recording)

  CAST
  Elektra                                Amy Shuard
  Chrysothemis                 Enriqueta Tarrés
  Klytämnestra                  Regina Resnik
  Confidante                       Sylvia Davis
  Trainbearer                       Louise Corsale
  Orestes                             Thomas Stewart

  Condutor                           Horst Stein
  Production                        Paul Hager

  Clip 1: Elektra is alone, reliving the horrific murder of her father, Agamemnon.

  Clip 2: Klytämnestra enters and recoils at seeing Elektra. The Queen asks the gods why she must endure such menacing glances from her own daughter. Elektra taunts her.

  Clip 3: After brother and sister are reunited, Orest commits to carrying out his grim task: murdering their mother, Klytämnestra. Elektra is overjoyed and blesses him.

  Clip 4: Orest has left to kill Klytämnestra and Elektra fears he does not have the ax. She waits amid mounting tension until hearing her mothers cries. “Strike again” she says as the household erupts in confusion at the Queen’s murder.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.

• Listener Response #1

  
  With three of the principals singing their signature roles, and with Bayreuth Festival veteran Horst Stein in the pit, San Francisco Opera’s 1966 Elektra fired on all cylinders.

  Amy Shuard is a name that today is perhaps known best among opera connoisseurs, but hers was a voice that commanded attention, as we hear in these excerpts. They testify also to a stage presence evident from the first bars she sings. But listen in particular to the last of these clips, in which Elektra goads Orest to sink his axe into Klytämnestra’s skull one more time: Shuard’s furious “Triff noch einmal!” is the scarier for its vengeful delight, and you can only hope that Regina Resnik will come out of this alive. Amy Shuard died when she was fifty and left just a handful of commercial recordings. In the US, she appeared only at San Francisco Opera, and besides Elektra, her roles here included Brünnhilde (in Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung) and Turandot.

  Regina Resnik, the Klytämnestra in this performance, spent the first ten years of her career as a soprano before shifting to mezzo roles. A singer of international renown, she was also a stalwart at the Metropolitan Opera, where she debuted in 1942 before beginning her long association with San Francisco Opera. Known for her powerful Klytämnestra, she recreated the role a year after her San Francisco performance, appearing as the tortured queen in Georg Solti’s devastating Elektra recording, never out of print since its 1967 release.

  Orest is the kind of heroic role seemingly made for baritone Thomas Stewart, a regular as Wotan, Don Giovanni, the Dutchman, and Falstaff. A favorite of audiences at Bayreuth, the Met, the Salzburg Easter Festival, and Lyric Opera of Chicago, he appeared on the War Memorial Opera House stage over twenty-five seasons, and in 1985, in recognition of that relationship, he received the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor. His Orest, as heard here, is primarily a foil to his sister Elektra, whose hysteria is unmistakable against his determined steadiness.

  Decades before American composer George Antheil dubbed himself the Bad Boy of Music, Richard Strauss enjoyed that reputation, if not the title. When Elektra premiered in 1909, some listeners believed Strauss had gone too far. He himself wrote that he had “penetrated to the uttermost limits of harmony … and of the receptivity of modern ears.” Elektra’s orchestra assumes the role of Greek chorus, commenting on the action. The score calls for 111 musicians playing 120 instruments that generate a teeth-shaking roar. Under Horst Stein, who polished his craft at Bayreuth as assistant to such podium legends as Hans Knappertsbusch and Herbert Von Karajan and who held a regular conducting post at the Vienna State Opera, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra attacks the score with a lion’s appetite. One imagines that these clips reveal exactly what Strauss was after. To those early audiences who complained that the effect was often unsettling, Strauss had a ready response: “When a mother is slain on the stage, do they expect me to write a violin concerto?”
  
  Larry Rothe writes about music for the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances. Visit www.larryrothe.com.

• Listener Response #2

             
  Strauss’s Elektra is surely the most superhumanly demanding role ever written for dramatic soprano. Hell-bent on revenge from her very first utterance, she expresses herself in music that works in constant emotional extremes, exhausting all but the most vocally and theatrically courageous singers in this comparatively rare vocal category.

  For two decades, beginning in the mid-1960s, Elektra was “owned” in many major houses by Sweden’s mighty Birgit Nilsson. Another eminent dramatic soprano, London-born Amy Shuard, was arguably Nilsson’s most vocally formidable competition, and it was Shuard whom San Francisco Opera chose when presenting the 1966 Elektra, its fourth production of the work since the 1938 company premiere. Shuard had already made a strong impression in Die Walküre (1963). Following Elektra, she would return to the War Memorial Opera House for two other signature roles: Turandot (1968) and the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde (1969).

  Shuard’s excellence is memorably evident in an excerpt from her character’s opening monologue. The voice is warmer and broader than Nilsson’s uniquely sword-like sound. It’s also capable of an exciting vehemence, reassuring security at the top, and great beauty and delicacy in softer phrases. Listen, for example, to the ravishing vocal line with which Strauss sets the words “Bist du selber eine Göttin?? (“Are you a goddess yourself?”), in Elektra’s scene with her mother Klytämnestra. Shuard proves totally convincing, too, in the recognition scene with her brother Orestes; through the entire final section of their duet, the voice simply pours out of Shuard, utterly unimpeded and exultant. Listeners will marvel at the intensity of her dramatic involvement in all the excerpts heard here.

  One of the greatest singing actresses to have portrayed Klytämnestra was American mezzo-soprano Regina Resnik. In her entrance, the character—opera’s most terrifying “mother from hell”—wonders bitterly why the gods have made her suffer so. In a role that is often growled, roared, shrieked, or otherwise vocally “faked,” Resnik set herself apart in her many performances of the role by truly singing the music, while at the same time powerfully communicating the agony felt by Klytämnestra. Repeatedly one is struck by the bite she gives to particular words, such as her repetitions of the simple question, “Warum?” (“Why?”).

  Heard briefly are American baritone Thomas Stewart, with a heroic instrument ideally suited to Orest, and Spanish soprano Enriqueta Tarrés, whose shining voice caps the brief ensemble with the four maids, after Klytämnestra’s murder is discovered.

  Everywhere in Strauss’s Elektra score—especially in Klytämnestra’s scene, where the music frequently works in fits and starts—it’s essential for the conductor to follow the singer very intently indeed. In San Francisco, Resnik and her colleagues were fortunate in the collaboration of Horst Stein, who’d rapidly established himself as one of the most gifted Strauss and Wagner conductors in German and Austrian opera houses.
  
  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Synopsis

  
  Queen Klytemnestra and Aegisthus have murdered King Agamemnon. She has sent her son Orestes into exile, and her two daughters Elektra and Chrysothemis have been moved to the servant's quarters. Elektra has become obsessed with the thought of vengeance for her father and lives for the return of her brother who shall be the instrument of her revenge.

  The Story of Elektra

  The serving maids discuss the two sisters and the degradation they have undergone. When they have left, Elektra enters mourning her murdered father and promising vengeance. Chrysothemis enters with the news that Elektra is to be put in a dungeon and says that it is better to die than live as they are living. Elektra rebukes her, consumed by the thought of vengeance.

  Queen Klytemnestra and her entourage enter. Though afraid of her daughter, the Queen speaks to Elektra, asking if there isn't a sacrifice that will drive away the demons that keep her from sleep. Elektra answers yes, and Klytemnestra warily asks what it is. "The blood of your own veins" Elektra replies. A confidante enters and whispers to the Queen, whose horror turns to scorn as she leaves for the palace.

  Chrysothemis rushes in with news that Orestes is dead. Elektra, excited, says they must now carry out the vengeance themselves, but Chrysothemis refuses to aid her. Elektra curses her and prepares to do the deed herself. A man appears and she discovers that it is Orestes whose death was falsely reported. He soon enters the palace, and a scream is heard from the murdered Queen. Aegisthus enters and Elektra lights his way to the palace. He too meets death by Orestes' hand. Elektra, triumphant at last, dances wildly in her joy and passion, and at the climax, she falls lifeless.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.

LISTEN

Broadcast (11/24/1978)
5 excerpts: total run time ~ 9 minutes

In 1969, Gwyneth Jones made her Company debut as Leonore in Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio. Nearly a decade later, her return to the role is heroic, heartfelt, definitive. The performance also marked Sheri Greenawald’s first appearance with San Francisco Opera.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  FIDELIO
  (In German)

  Music by Ludwig van Beethoven
  Libretto by Josef Sonnleithner, based on the play by Jean Nicolas Bouilly

  War Memorial Opera House
  November 24, 1978 (Broadcast)

  CAST
  Leonore                                   Gwyneth Jones
  Marzelline                               Sheri Greenawald
  Rocco                                       Marius Rintzler

  Jaquino                                    Jerome Pruett
  Florestan                                 Spas Wenkoff**

  Conductor                              Günther Wich**
  Director                                    Federik Mirdita**

  **American debut

  Clip 1: Marzelline is in love with Fidelio (Leonore in disguise) and excitedly anticipates their happiness together.  

  Clip 2: Marzelline, Leonore, Rocco, and Jaquino express their innermost feeling of hope, agony, satisfaction, and confusion.

  Clip 3: Leonore resolves to find and free her husband from the prison.

  Clip 4: Leonore defeats Don Pizarro and frees Florestan. Husband and wife are reunited in ecstatic joy.

  Clip 5: The prisoners are released and everyone joins Leonore and Florestan in a jubilant finale.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.

• Listener Response #1

  
  Beethoven never did anything halfway. Into his only opera, Fidelio, he put everything that makes him the reason many of us fell in love with music. Fidelio cost Beethoven years of work, and even after his three tries to get it right, peaks and valleys remain. You mull the opera over, you understand why some of its numbers work better than others, and then you rationalize why even the weaker parts do their job, why the valleys are just part of the vista. Any flaws in Fidelio are beside the point, the point being that, in emotional terms, this opera delivers. Think about what you look for in music and specifically what you look for from Beethoven, and you can only conclude that this is as close to perfect as it gets. Heroic drama, spiritual lift, heart-stirring arias and choruses that seem to connect with the cosmos, and a tale of how love defeats an authoritarian tyrant: Fidelio has it all. Those who ask what art can contribute to a world as troubled as ours will find the answer here.

  Seemingly unaware of vocal limits, Beethoven demands singers equal to his imagination. When San Francisco Opera staged Fidelio in 1978, it addressed this reality by assembling a cast headed by two notable Wagnerians. Gwyneth Jones, one of the great Brünnhildes of the past several decades, appeared as Leonore, also among her signature roles. Spas Wenkoff, a heldentenor known especially for his Tristan, made his company debut as Leonore’s wrongfully imprisoned husband, Florestan. Soprano Sheri Greenawald, who would go on to a distinguished career with San Francisco Opera as Artistic Director of the Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program, sang Marzelline, jailer Rocco’s daughter.

  Quick background: Marzelline falls in love with her father’s new helper, whom she supposes to be the young man Fidelio but who is in fact the disguised Leonore, her new identity a means of getting to Florestan, the husband she believes is imprisoned in the dungeon’s depths by the treacherous governor, Pizarro. Leonore goes on to free her husband and engineers Pizzaro’s consequent arrest, ushering in a reign of peace and righteous governance.

  In Marzelline’s ecstatic “Wie glücklich will ich werden,” Sheri Greenawald fills her soliloquy with a rapture not always heard in this number, disclosing the vulnerability that (although Beethoven never says so) will surely be brutalized when Marzelline learns her love has been a fantasy.

  Fidelio is often subjected to cuts, but not of the quartet, “Mir ist so wunderbar.” Here it unfolds as though in a trance, time seemingly suspended and, at the same time, moving inevitably forward, a rhapsody.

  In “Ich folg’ dem innern Triebe,” we hear the vocal power and emotional penetration that made Gwyneth Jones such a powerful Brünnhilde.

  Leonore and Florestan celebrate their reunion in the duet “O namenlose Freude.” Coming immediately after the hyper-dramatic scene in which Leonore rescues her husband, this number can seem a letdown. Not here. Jones and Wenkoff give it their all, with thrilling results. But even before she sings, Jones displays how completely she inhabits her character. Listen as she cries out “Mein Florestan!” That line is usually delivered almost sotto voce, and you wonder if the emotion of the moment inspired this outburst, which conveys a much-needed verisimilitude.

  Fidelio culminates in one of music’s great celebrations. A new era is about to begin for a previously oppressed people. The finale is a vision of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Beethoven never expressed such ideals more transportingly, not even in the Ninth Symphony.
  
  Larry Rothe writes about music for the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances. Visit www.larryrothe.com.

• Listener Response #2

  
  If not quite a constant at San Francisco Opera, Fidelio certainly had a more than respectable record with the company prior to this performance. Beethoven’s only opera had been heard in eight seasons since 1937, with exceptionally distinguished casts.

  The guiding spirit of the 1978 production was the 50-year-old German conductor Günther Wich. Judging by these excerpts, he was clearly a splendidly authoritative figure on the podium. Music director at the time at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, he would make his sole appearance in San Francisco leading the 1978 Fidelio. One can only wonder why his excellence in this production didn’t warrant a return engagement.

  The first excerpt showcases the remarkable American lyric soprano Sheri Greenawald, then still fairly early in her career. Exhibiting not a trace of simpering soubrette cuteness, she brings Marzelline’s aria to vibrant life, offering the absolute maximum in musicality and sheer sincerity. This was the first of seven memorable characterizations Greenawald would offer San Francisco Opera audiences through 1986. In 2002, having retired from performing, she took on the leadership of the San Francisco Opera Center and Merola Opera Program, concluding her exceptionally distinguished tenure in 2020.

  In the opera’s famous canon quartet, Greenawald is joined by a gifted lyric tenor, Jerome Pruett; an endearingly hearty-voiced bass, Marius Rintzler; and dramatic soprano Gwyneth Jones, with whose name Beethoven’s heroine was already becoming synonymous. These four voices, all highly distinctive, manage to combine felicitously, in a more full-bodied presentation of this glorious music than one usually hears.

  The last section of Leonore’s monologue is most memorable for the quiet yet electrifying intensity Jones brings to both utterances of “Ich folg’ dem inner Triebe” (“I follow the inward impulse”). Universally hailed for the warmth and womanliness of her Leonore, Jones lavishes on the role a uniquely voluminous sound. Never for a moment is there the slighted doubt that her voice will be able to fill out these relentlessly grand-scale phrases.

  In the finale of the dungeon scene, we hear Jones in the spoken word, only briefly but memorably: the emotionally exhausted heroine, having saved her husband from death, is asked by him, “What have you done for me?” “Nothing, nothing, my Florestan,” she answers. Jones whispers the word “nichts,” but then repeats it with a burst of emotion that is exceedingly touching. Jones is particularly beautiful in the crescendo/decrescendo she achieves on “Florestan”—truly colored by Leonore’s profound love for her husband—before the repeat of their duet’s main theme. The amplitude of the soprano’s sound in the duet is well matched by one of Europe’s foremost heldentenors of the time: Spas Wenkoff, a Bulgarian who’d triumphed opposite Jones just a few months previously at Bayreuth in Tannhäuser. 

  The quiet ecstasy felt by Leonore and Florestan in the opera’s final scene gives way to all-out exuberance and irrepressible joy when singing with the chorus, which is in exhilarating form . Jones and Wenkoff are exultant here, joining all their colleagues to bring Fidelio to a thrilling conclusion.
  
  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Listener Response #3

  
  A November 24, 1978 broadcast features Beethoven’s Fidelio, the composer’s only opera and one of most stirring political works ever written, as powerful in its humanitarian stance as the same composer’s Ninth Symphony. Soprano Sheri Greenawald is in excellent form, sounding secure and clear as the young Marzelline. With such a well-balanced voice and sure technique, it’s no surprise she capped a fine international career with an 18-year stint shepherding the young singers of the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera. In a short excerpt from the heavenly first act quartet, a canon where each voice sings the same music, Greenawald is joined by Gwyneth Jones, Marius Rintzler, and Jerome Pruett.

  In male disguise as “Fidelio,” the heroine Leonore is looking for her husband, missing for two years and probably imprisoned for his political views. Alone at last, Leonore explodes in a classical opera scena. From a grand accompanied recitative full of questions and changes in perspective, the singer steadies herself in a lyrical aria, “Komm, Hoffnung” (Come, Hope), before launching the energetic, electrifying final section heard here, “Ich folg’ dem inner Triebe” (I follow the inner impulse). Gwyneth Jones was one of the foremost interpreters of this role, and her gleaming, golden sound rings out forcefully, bringing thrilling sound to the trumpet figures, runs and leaps of this rousing aria.

  There was ample vibrato--noticeably wide and slow--in Jones’s voice, yet the core of the sound remained intact, unlike so many wobbling “dramatic” voices today that have no central focus. Jones’s sound always conveyed a womanliness that could register as domestic (here, or as the Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, or as Die Meistersinger’s Eva) or goddess-like (Brünnhilde, Tannhäuser’s Venus). When husband and wife are at last reunited, soprano and tenor trade phrases in perfect balance, separating and coming together again and again. Spas Wenkoff, in his U.S. debut, matches Jones in vocal drama and power. The company, under the direction of Günther Wich, brings the opera to a thrilling close.
  
  Judith Malafronte (mezzo soprano) has sung with opera companies, orchestras, oratorio societies, and early music groups throughout the world. Holding degrees from Vassar College and Stanford University, she has recorded for major labels in a broad range of repertoire and writes regularly for Opera News, Early Music America magazine, and other print and online outlets. After fifteen years on the faculty at Yale University, she now teaches voice in the Historical Performance department at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. 

   

• Listener Response #4

  
  Like many opera fans there are certain phrases or bits of dialogue I wait for eagerly to see how the singer will do them that evening. Words like the Marschallin’s final “Ja, ja” at the end of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. One of my all-time favorites is in Act II of Fidelio, after Leonore has saved the life of her husband, Florestan, by jumping in front of the gun with which his political enemy, Pizzaro, intends to murder him. The scene ends and everyone leaves except for Leonore and Florestan who sing a wildly joyous duet. But before they sing the duet husband and wife have a brief conversation. They have not seen each other in years, and Florestan, still deeply shaken by what has just happened says in wonder, “My Leonore, what you have done for me!” And she replies simply, “Nichts, nichts mein Florestan.” (Nothing, my Florestan.)

  Every soprano puts her own stamp on those words, words that sum up not only Fidelio but Beethoven’s own view of marriage, something he longed for but never found. Such simple words, but they express a profound depth of love and commitment that are overwhelming. So I am horrified that in many modern productions of Fidelio that tiny bit of dialogue is cut. Why? Do directors think audiences will be embarrassed by such a blatant expression of love between a husband and wife? Have we become so sophisticated that we are simply beyond such an honest, simple expression of affection between a married couple? Fortunately in this marvelous broadcast of Fidelio from San Francisco Opera, the dialogue is retained, and I am not embarrassed to say that when I heard Gwyneth Jones say, “Nicht … nicht mein Florestan” I was so overwhelmed by the emotion she expressed that I immediately, involuntarily burst into tears.
  
  Paul Thomason has combined a lifelong passion for music, his decades of experience in publishing, and his delight in storytelling to create a unique voice in writing and lecturing about opera. In addition to writing regularly for the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Aspen Music Festival and other companies in the US and Europe, he is also a regular guest on the award-winning podcast Aria Code and the London Wagner Society’s Zoom series.

• Broadcast Intermission Interview: Gwyneth Jones

  
  "Anyone who knows me (Terry McEwen) knows that Gwyneth Jones is a very special prima donna in my life.  The last 20 years I’ve been working with famous prima donnas, but you have to have some favorites and Gwyneth is one of my special favorites, so it’s a terrific thrill for me to be here in San Francisco, my sweet, to interview about Fidelio."
  
  Listen in as Gwyneth Jones is interviewed by Terence McEwen, the then Executive VP of London Records, but soon to be third general director of SF Opera.
  (run time ~ 19 minutes)

  Listen
  Transcript

• Synopsis

  
  BACKGROUND—Florestan, a fighter for freedom, has been imprisoned by his enemy, Pizarro, the governor of a fortress used to detain political prisoners. There he is slowly being starved to death while rumors of his death are spread abroad. Florestan's wife, Leonore, has heard the rumors but clings to the hope that it is another villainous game of Pizarro's. As a last desperate measure, she resolves to search for her husband in the prison and free him. Disguised as a young man, Fidelio, she is employed by the chief jailer, Rocco, as his assistant.

  ACT I

  SCENE 1—The young prison at­tendant Jaquino courts Marzelline in vain, for she has fallen in love with Fidelio. Her father, Rocco, also wants a union between his daughter and Fidelio and hopes for the governor's permission to use the latter as a helper with the secret prisoners. Marzelline fears that Fidelio won't be able to bear all the misery that such work entails, but Leonore knows she must have courage and strength to carry out her secret plan—the rescue of her husband.

  SCENE 2—Pizarro receives news from a friend that the minister, Don Fernando, intends a surprise inspection of the prison. Fearing that Florestan will be found, he resolves to have him killed. A sentry is posted on the tower to give a trumpet signal as soon as the minister is sighted. Rocco, while not willing to be a murderer, agrees to hold his tongue for money and later hide Florestan's body in a ruined cistern. Leonore, who has overheard the plan to murder a prisoner, resolves to save him, whoever he may be. At her request Rocco allows some of the prisoners to go into the courtyard. Leonore is distressed that Florestan is not among them. Pizarro, furious at Rocco's independent action, has the prisoners locked up again.

  ACT II

  SCENE 1—ln prison, Florestan, weakened from hunger and thirst, has a vision: his wife appears to him as an angel of freedom. Rocco and Leonore come down into the deepest vault of the prison to open the cistern which is to be used as a grave. Leonore recognizes the unknown prisoner as her husband. Against Pizarro's orders she hands him bread and wine but dares do no more. When Pizarro appears and tries to stab the defenseless Florestan, she rushes to shield him. Pizarro, in a burst of rage, attempts to kill them both. Leonore draws a pistol and levels it at him. Suddenly a trumpet call is heard announcing the minister's arrival. Leonore and Florestan are saved and reunited.

  SCENE 2—Florestan's fellow prisoners have been freed by the minister and Leonore removes Florestan's chains. Marzelline, recovered from her infatuation, consents to marry Jaquino and Pizarro is arrested and led away, as the chorus sings in praise of conjugal love.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.