A Nopenny Opera

This evening T. and I attended the free performance of Beethoven's opera Fidelio at the Staatsoper. We rode in the bus to the Kulturforum, and stepped out to find that Potsdamer Platz was, for once (and I never expected I'd say this), sublime. The deep blue summer sky shone behind it, greyish white clouds drifting on it; the red brick Kollhoff building sparkled and gleamed; and the glass façade of the Deutsche Bahn building evinced a great clarity and cleanliness. The scene, as we passed through the Brandenburger Tor and then strode along Unter den Linden, past the Russian Embassy and Komische Oper and the car store, was scarcely less beautiful. It was brightly thronged with people, buses and cars, underneath the strong green trees, and in front of the stately buildings, and joyously alive.

Finally we came to the Bebelplatz, where thousands of presumptive music-lovers already sat on chairs which they had brought with them, or on the ground. On the parapet of the Staatsoper, the sculptures, the red fluttering opera house flag, and two men surveyed the scene; formally dressed men and women sipped drinks and chatted on the roof of the Hotel de Rome; and the further sculptures ranged above the sheet that conceals the façade of the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University, were watching too. Black-suited secret service men kept a professional eye on the crowd. T. and I at last found a place to stand at the railing that fenced in a sound system tower, near one of them.

After waiting for twenty minutes or so, we beheld three men ambling out onto the stage, among them our mayor Klaus Wowereit, and each of them held a brief speech of introduction. There was also a taped introduction to the plot of Fidelio, which I industriously ignored as I do not like melodramatic opera storylines. The crowd was a trifle boisterous, though not as far as the speeches were concerned, which they rewarded with polite applause. People who were sitting shouted at people who were standing to sit down, and the people who were standing muttered about not being told that they had to sit down, so they bloody well weren't going to do it. After the speeches, we had to watch the interior of the Staatsoper. Among the victims, captured nolens volens by the camera, there was one man who was gaping in a beatific grin, and another who looked at the camera with much interest and then pushed up his glasses, at which points a low laugh rose from the audience, which I joined despite feeling guilty about it. It was very stupid of me, but I thought the concert would be taking place on the stage outside (and that the singers would merely sing their roles instead of acting them out, which I wouldn't have minded (c; ), and was much disillusioned when I at last grasped the fact that it wasn't going to happen.

Then we were finally shown the orchestra pit, where Daniel Barenboim then sat down, vide slouched down, and we had a mildly embarrassing view of him that must resemble the television's view of a couch potato. The camera should have provided views of the musicians too, but it didn't, so we uncomfortably stared at the conducting, largely the reverse of vigorous, of the musical director for the entirety of the overture. At least some of us tittered when the tip of a violin bow reared itself in the foreground (the camera work was not exactly impeccable). But I gazed at the ground and tried to listen to the music itself, and I was enchanted. The score was truly brought to life and truly substantial; I thought that I should like to listen to the performance repeatedly and often, which is high praise indeed. There were nice flute solos, and a nice cello solo that T. also admired; altogether the sole disturbing element (Fidelio was — and, to a great degree, still is — wholly unfamiliar to me) was the frequent Mozartiness of the music itself.

At first the opera was, as usual, overacted and offensively perky. My main objections to opera are that it appears to me to be artificial and overblown, and that it draws me into a world that is unhealthy since it holds no common sense, no humour (except the aforementioned offensively perky variant), and none of the breadth and variety that is lent to real life by diverse outer influences. It looked as if this performance of Fidelio would confirm my objections. Also, the costume of Marzelline, a cheery vision in yellow plaid, reminded me of High School Musical for some reason. Later on I didn't find the settings tasteful, either, what with the three men in red prison uniforms who were suspended from the ceilings as if hung; and the minimalist grey metal backdrop, the white grid of rectangular holes that represented the jail cells, the cypress-like tree, and the glow of blue-rimmed spotlight in the background were not my cup of tea.

However — once Rocco appeared on the scene, portrayed by an excellent actor who has the virtues of genuine seriousness and restraint, and a face that even when serious has no deficiency of humour, I began to be reconciled. Waltraud Meier was a surprise as Fidelio at first, but in the course of time I felt that her worn and more experienced face was deeply suited to her role as someone whose beloved has been incarcerated for two years. A gravity and earnestness settled on the opera, and I became very much absorbed in the questions of political imprisonment and civil rights, and the mean-souled machinations of pompous idiots who pass as politicians. The extreme relevance of the situations to the present day struck me, too; when the prisoners' chorus spoke about being watched, it reminded me of the proliferation of public surveillance in the past years. I don't believe in militant political activity in the pursuit of abstract ideas, but only in the pursuit of freedom from foreign occupation; this was, however, not so much an issue in the opera as the plight of the prisoners in itself. (Also, I kept on wishing that someone would push Don Pizarro off a cliff or something, thereby cutting the Gordian knot and ending the problems, before remembering that this is a reprehensibly bloodthirsty wish, and moreover that it is absurd to become so involved in a fictional tale.)

So an hour and a half passed, and I thought it was twenty or thirty minutes at most. Still, T. and I had sore feet from standing the whole time, and we wanted to go home, so we detached ourselves from the throng and set off along Unter den Linden again. The sunset was unbelievably beautiful, a rich orange that did resemble a furnace that was lighting and warming the world. What was even more unbelievably beautiful was Brandenburg Gate, illumined palely against the intense indigo of the clear night sky, where Mars or Venus twinkled, and grey birds passed swiftly and silently overhead so that they resembled shooting stars where the spotlights lit them. Even before, at the Bebelplatz, there had been a flock of birds pouring through the serene sky. I had an odd feeling that something momentous and good would happen to me today; as far as I can tell, it didn't really, and still it was a strangely lovely day.