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EARLY THIS YEAR, NIKOLAUS HARNONCOURT, the eighty-threeyear-old don ofVienna's historically-informed performance movement, took to the press to inform theatergoers that they would soon hear Fidelio with Beethoven's original sonic intentions for the first time. Though hardly modest, his pronouncement had several facts going for it: while the opera had been revived at the Theater an der Wien a few times since its 1805 premiere in the same venue, it had never been played there since on period instruments. The Concernais Musicus Wien therefore seemed like a promising choice for the more transparent acoustic that Beethoven originally composed for, whose similar re-creation of Die Zauberflöte at the Salzburg Festival in summer 2012 was greeted with critical acclaim. It was also clear from the roster of soloists that Harnoncourt would opt for lighter lyrical voices than the sturdy Wagnerians typically heard in Beethoven's only opera. Tickets sold out early and expectations were high, perhaps too high, but this production delivered on balance an interpretation that was at turns thought provoking, revelatory, and-with the exception of one embarrassing directorial decision-dramatically engaging.
Herbert Föttinger, directing opera for the first time, approached the task for the most part with a minimum of caprice. The prison setting is transplanted to an authoritarian regime sometime in the early-to-mid twentieth century, with just enough topical detail withheld to prevent it from being pinpointed more specifically. An imposing greyness in costumes (Birgit Hutter) and set (designed by the late Rolf Langenfass and realized by StagoCasall Arts) dominates the first act. Marzelline (Anna Prohaska) appears first as an icily attractive prison secretary clattering on a mechanical typewriter, her rejected fiancé Jaquino (Johannes Chum) recastas a menacing company man who in the first scene tries to win back her affections with brute force. Her father Rocco (Lars Woldt), usually portrayed as a warm-hearted patriarch tom between worship of material security and moral qualms about the more brutal requirements of his job, is here sharpened into an uncomfortably familiar figure, the hardened jailer who can justify most anything under the guise of "just following orders." A banal series of grey file cabinets in the background no doubt documents the injustices wrought by Pizarro (Martin Gantner), whose politically motivated villainy is transformed in this production into cold-blooded...