Fidelio

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

20
Saturday
April
19:30 - 22:00
C-Prices: € 100,00 / € 82,00 / € 58,00 / € 34,00 / € 24,00
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Information about the work

Opera in two acts
Libretto by Josef Sonnleithner, Stephan von Breuning and Georg Friedrich Treitschke after Jean-Nicolas Bouilly
First performance on 23rd May, 1814 in Vienna
Premiere at Deutsche Oper Berlin on 25 November 2022

approx. 2 hours 30 minutes / one interval

In German language with German and English surtitles

Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance

recommended from 13 years
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Our thanks to our partners

Presented by rbb Kultur. Supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V.

20
Saturday
April
19:30 - 22:00
C-Prices: € 100,00 / € 82,00 / € 58,00 / € 34,00 / € 24,00
Buy tickets
Cast
the content

On the work
Suffused with the spirit of the French Revolution, FIDELIO explores issues of individual and collective freedom in the face of tyrannical suppression. For his one venture into opera Beethoven chose a political event rooted in the French tradition of rescue opera. It tells the story of a fearless woman, Leonore, who triggers the end of the old order by having her husband released from prison, where he has been detained on a whim. Far from evincing Beethoven’s inability to compose a coherent opera, this mixed bag of genre elements – German light opera, heartfelt arias, exquisite orchestral interludes and a symphonic close – reflects his revolutionary idea of dramaturgical opposites and subversion of form. The further Leonore descends into the depths of the dungeon, the clearer the existential core of the drama becomes. In an explosive choral and symphonic finale, which, with its quote from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, foreshadows Beethoven’s “Ninth”, the uncompromising affirmation of liberty, human rights and humanist ideals bursts forth. The work has repeatedly been appropriated for political ends - on both sides of the spectrum – with Leonore acquiring iconic status. Yet Beethoven’s musical vision of a humanist society still manages to thwart all attempts to encapsulate the opera in simplified interpretations.

On the production
David Hermann, who has attracted plaudits at the Deutsche Oper for his stagings of such diverse works as THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL, ORESTEIA and THE MAKROPULOS AFFAIR, has now teamed up with set and costume designer Johannes Schütz to tackle Beethoven’s masterpiece. Their production homes in on interior and exterior lives, liberty and captivity, power and powerlessness. For FIDELIO they have created a set that renders, in poetic images, the jail’s hierarchy and mechanisms of manipulation, so vividly portrayed by Beethoven and his librettist. With his sensitive and psychological touch, David Hermann lays bare the deformations and dangerous instability of, and strain felt by, characters who are part of this unbridled system – be it beyond their control as prisoners or “willingly” as wardens or employees. Leonore, too, ventures deep into the system, moving from light into darkness, with the pressure steadily mounting on all the protagonists as she does so. Is liberty something that can be fully achieved without a seed of new sorrow being sown?

Our articles on the subject

No Wagner without Beethoven
Prison as a private function
Backstage with …Johannes Schütz
Fidelio – The Synopsis
An Opera Caught Between Worlds
Freedom – and then?

Our recommendations

The Magic Flute
Le nozze di Figaro
Don Giovanni
The Magic Flute

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02
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 2. Fensterchen

In today's Advent calendar window, we are giving away 3 DVDs of "Der Schatzgräber" - an opera in a prelude, four acts and a postlude by Franz Schreker. If you would like to win one of the three DVDs, please send an e-mail today with the subject "The 2nd window" to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de.

DER SCHATZGRÄBER (THE TREASURE HUNTER) by Franz Schreker was a triumph at its world premiere in Frankfurt in 1920 and went on to play 44 times at assorted venues over the next five years. It then fell victim to a shifting zeitgeist and slipped from opera-house programmes, with a National Socialist ban on performances sealing its demise. Even after 1945 the Schreker revival was a long time coming – and THE TREASURE HUNTER has not featured prominently in the renaissance.

As with the vast majority of Schreker’s libretti, the story of Els and Elis explores the relationship between fantasy and reality, between art and life. Soulmates in the sense that they are both at the mercy of the king’s disposition, Els and Elis set off in search of different treasures. Elis, the minstrel, uses his magic lute to locate a stash of jewels and do humanity a good turn. Els, an innkeeper’s daughter who has grown up motherless in a tough, male-chauvinist world, becomes a liar, cheat and murderess in pursuit of her goal, tasking her suitors to steal the queen’s jewels and then having them killed once they have returned with the haul of treasure. Yet even with the gold in their possession, the pair are not content, and so, true to form, Schreker turns his attention to the theme of yearning per se, which is the actual “treasure” that the composer is interested in, “a dream of happiness and redemption”. Elis and Els are caught up in a swirl of dreams, memories, premonitions, songs and music. Their stories take on a dreamlike quality in a world beset by greed, murder and emotional inconstancy. For Franz Schreker the path to redemption could only be via art. Composed during the turmoil of the First World War, the TREASURE HUNTER score amounts to Schreker’s personal confession of artistic faith, executed in florid strokes of late-Romantic musical colour.

Conductor Marc Albrecht; Staging Christof Loy; Set design Johannes Leiacker; Costume design Barbara Drosihn; With Tuomas Pursio, Doke Pauwels, Clemens Bieber, Michael Adams, Joel Allison, Michael Laurenz, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Seth Carico, Daniel Johansson, Gideon Poppe, Stephen Bronk, Elisabet Strid, Patrick Cook, Tyler Zimmerman a. o.; Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin



Closing date: 2 December 2023, the winners will be informed by email on 4 December 2023. The DVDs will then be sent by post. Legal recourse is excluded.