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3“Victoria Lawal as [Marzelline] is a bright, effervescent presence on stage, who effectively gives voice to the young woman’s professional and personal dilemmas. [Marzelline} is front-and-center for the first few scenes but then disappears from the stage, which is a shame: there was unfinished business that deserved to be explored in Lawal’s [Marzelline].
“Lawal [is] confident and charismatic.”
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1When New York’s Heartbeat Opera presented their “version” of Beethoven’s Fidelio four years ago, the reception was overwhelmingly positive. I felt skeptical and opted out of going and have regretted it since. I got another chance when, during the second week of February of 2022, the company brought their production back, this time to the Grace Rainey Rodgers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I am gladdened – and enriched – at having finally caught up with it. Beethoven’s support and passion for the concepts of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” first put forth in 1790, are well known. He was drawn to a play called “Léonore, ou l’Amour Conjugal” by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which depicted a devoted wife’s attempts to gain access to the prison in which her husband is being held for his political beliefs. She does so by disguising herself as a man, becomes a guard, and eventually frees him from both the prison and injustice. The play was as much about “l’amour conjugal” as it was about political suppression, and while Beethoven and his librettist had to sidestep the Austrian censors by stressing the former over the latter, no amount of fiddling with it could mask its message about freedom in the face of suppression.
