OPERA REVIEW : Political Gimmickry Distorts Updated ‘Fidelio’ in San Diego

SAN DIEGO —  Remember Beethoven’s “Fidelio”?

It used to be a noble Romantic opera predicated on daring expressive contrasts. It dealt with basics: good versus evil, freedom versus oppression, lyricism versus drama, Singspiel intimacy versus heroic grandeur.

Forget all that.

In staging Beethoven’s daunting masterpiece for the first time, the San Diego Opera has refused to leave lofty enough alone. Seeking novelty for its own sour sake and fiercely courting--here comes that awful noun--relevance, the company has joined the ranks of the modish gimmick mongers.

Ian Campbell has led his conservative operatic band down the road of trendiness. It is unsettling.

Anyone who has seen Peter Sellars’ “Tannhauser” or Patrice Chereau’s “Ring” or Harry Kupfer’s “Fliegende Hollander” or Christopher Alden’s “Coronation of Poppea” knows that a sensitive and imaginative director need not regard the original libretto as gospel. Narrative and stylistic liberties are always permissible, even desirable, so long as the innovations shed new light on the emotive design, and so long as the innovator respects the dynamic structure of the music.

As designed for the Houston Opera by Neil Peter Jampolis and, most crucial, restaged for San Diego by Robert Tannenbaum, “Fidelio” now takes place in a shady, chain-link prison in some ominous banana republic. The program magazine calls the locale “a Central American nation governed by a military regime.”

This certainly looks and smells like Nicaragua, even if it doesn’t sound like Nicaragua. It still sounds like Beethoven. There’s the first of many rubs.

Everything here is relentlessly grim. The cozy little domestic drama of Marzelline and her suitor gets the same sleazy treatment as the sacrificial rhetoric of Leonore and the timeless pathos of the prisoners. Good-natured Rocco is not above accepting bribes to the tune of his “Gold” aria while a distinctly drab and put-upon Marzelline, anything but your ordinary garden-variety soubrette, looks the other way.

The arch-villain Pizzaro--there can be no Dons here--becomes just the sadistic bureaucrat next door. He arrives in a jeep.

The erstwhile deus ex machina , Fernando, becomes just another soap-box politico with a retinue of double-breasted advisers. His machina happens to be a long black limousine, and it inspires entrance applause.

It is hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys in this confused jumble of anti-theatrical images and mock-moralistic impulses. The fearless Leonore and her beloved Florestan are identified as “freedom fighters,” a debatable euphemism that Ronald Reagan applied to the controversial Contras. The liberating conquerors are stuffy Americans who hand out little flags to be waved by the unwashed masses.

The potentially uplifting denouement--an affirmation of universal brotherhood--actually inspires laughter. Something is very wrong here.

One has to assume that the director intended to impose some elements of black humor and topical irony. It is an interesting idea.

Unfortunately, nothing in the music supports such anti-poetic license. This abscheulich outrage is imposed at the expense of Beethoven, and at the expense of the audience.

The grotesque theatrics--especially callous in the finale--prove doubly painful because the musical standards remain surprisingly high. Edward Downes (the British maestro, not the Met quizmaster) enforces eloquent brio with a dedicated cast and a rather sloppy orchestra. He also has the good sense to resist interpolating the third “Leonore” overture, which invariably overpowers whatever music follows.

Sabine Hass, the intended Leonore, reportedly fell victim to the flu on Tuesday. Luckily, Elizabeth Connell happened to be vacationing in San Diego, and at very short notice Campbell persuaded this internationally celebrated soprano to fill Hass’ cross-dressed trench coat. She did so with generous authority, luminous tone and melismatic ease, all of which compensated for rather self-conscious delivery of the carefully edited German dialogue.

At the climax of the dungeon scene, incidentally, Connell appropriated Anja Silja’s famous old trick of doffing her cap to suddenly reveal Fidelio’s true, feminine disposition. The impact of the cascading locks was compromised, alas, by the realization that her husband, Florestan, had even longer hair.

As Florestan, a Scottish quasi-Heldentenor named Graeme Matheson-Bruce sang with arresting freshness and a nice metallic ring. Unlike many a more famous colleague, he did not flinch from the high tessitura of his treacherous aria. He did encounter a few problems, however, involving sagging pitch and unvaried decibels.

Sunny Joy Langton was the endearing, tiny-voiced Marzelline, Randall Outland her grubby, inaudible Jaquino. Arthur Korn brought gutsy paternal fervor to the contradictory platitudes of Rocco. Tom Fox struggled manfully with the nasty rhetoric of Pizzaro, and earned approving boos for his efforts. As Fernando, Harry Dworchak did his best to reconcile the sight of a sleazy U.S. statesman with the sound of a bel-canto basso.

The chorus, trained by Martin Wright, mustered considerable poignancy for the prisoners’ apostrophe to sunlight but lacked conviction in the ultimate ode to joy. Given the bizarre staging concept, that couldn’t be too surprising.