The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 1

-- from Beethoven's setting of Schiller's "Ode 'To Joy',"
in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony

Jessye Norman, soprano; Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; Plácido Domingo, tenor; Walter Berry, bass-baritone; Vienna State Opera Concert Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded 1980


NOW, WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DON FERNANDO?

DON FERNANDO: Our best of kings' will and pleasure
leads me here to you, poor people,
that I may uncover the night of crime,
which black and heavy encompassed all.
No longer kneel down like slaves,
stern tyranny be far from me!
A brother seeks his brothers,
and gladly helps, if help he can.
CHORUS: Hail the day! Hail the hour!
DON FERNANDO: A brother seeks his brothers,
and gladly helps, if help he can. . . .

-- from the final scene of Fidelio

Martti Talvela (bs), Don Fernando; Leipzig Radio Chorus, Staatskapelle Dresden, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1968

by Ken

Even a seasoned operagoer may be forgiven for forgetting, even when Don Fernando appears at the top of a Fidelio cast list, as he often does, just who the heck he is. The fact is, if you add to what we've just heard a few lines we're going to hear in a while and just a few more we heard a few weeks ago ("'In this life scoundrels always receive their just desserts': Now that we know the lesson of Don Giovanni, how does it square with the lesson of Fidelio?," June 28), you've got the entire role!

And listen to who we've got singing it! Yes, it's early-career Martti Talvela, but he'd already established himself as a star, and just listen to that voice. There's none of that yawny, slidey quality that settled in dispiritingly quickly. (A reference point: the King Marke he sang in the 1965 live-from-Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen (and Christa Ludwig the spectacular Brangäne, one of my favorites of her recordings, conducted by, well, as it happens, Karl Böhm.) Here that ringing, booming bass slashes and soars and I'm going to say dazzles with its strength and beauty and ease. I think I need to revisit some more of those early recordings!


BUT THEN, "A-LIST" CASTING OF THE ROLE
IS MORE THE RULE THAN THE EXCEPTION

Preview: "And yet they'll say that a jealous husband is a madman" -- meet Verdi's Master Ford

Bryn Terfel and Anthony Michaels-Moore as Falstaff and Ford in Act II, Scene 1 of Covent Garden's Falstaff, 2003

Excerpt 1 (three performances)
Is it a dream? or reality?
Two enormous horns
are growing from my head.
Is it a dream? Master Ford!
Master Ford! Are you sleeping?


Excerpt 2 (three performances)
The time is fixed,
the trick fullly planned;
you're cheated and swindled!
And yet they'll say that
a jealous husband is a madman!


Excerpt 3 (three performances)
I'll explode.
I'll avenge the insult!
Let it be praised forever
from the bottom of my heart: jealousy!


by Ken

Some of you will recognize the source of these wonderful excerpts, and I hope those of you who don't will enjoy them just as much. In a moment we'lre going to hear the complete excerpt from which this excerpt is excerpted, and then Sunday we're going to hear (I think) the whole scene from which that excerpt is excerpted.


WHAT WE'RE HEARING . . .

In "Boris Godunov," the Russian people do just as they're told

Although I titled Friday night's preview post "Long live Tsar Boris Feodorovich," we never did get to that famous line from the Coronation Scene of Boris Godunov. If I could have edited this clip, I would have stopped it at 1:58, so we would have heard just:

PRINCE SHUISKY: Long live Tsar Boris Feodorovich!
THE PEOPLE: Long live the Tsar, our father!
PRINCE SHUISKY: Praise him!

(This clip of the Coronation Scene is from the Andrei Tarkovsky-directed Unitel film of Boris, with Yevgeny Boitsov as Prince Shuisky and Robert Lloyd as Boris, Valery Gergiev conducting Covent Garden forces.)

by Ken

As noted in the caption above, I never did get around to the line "Long live Tsar Boris Feodorovich," from the Coronation Scene of Boris Godunov, in Friday night's preview post of that name. So that's where I wanted to start today, and I remembered that YouTube now at least sometimes allows you to edit clips. But apparently it's only the starting point you can choose, whereas I wanted to start at the start and choose my own stopping point. So I'm trusting you to remember that you're honor-bound to watch no farther than that 1:58 point for now.

I think it's hard for anyone not to be gripped by those stark opening chords of the Coronation Scene of Boris Godunov, especially as amped up -- into lusher starkness! -- by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in his now-widely-disparaged version of the opera. For the record, here's how it sounded in Mussorgsky's head:


Andrei Sokolov (t), Prince Shuisky; USSR TV and Radio Large Chorus and Large Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Fedoseyev, cond. Melodiya-Philips, recorded 1978-83

I have to say that this is the most impactful performance of the composer's version I've heard (though I do wish those damned bells had been reined in). Most pure-Mussorgsky performances tend to sound thin and underpowered. Here again is Rimsky's version:


[ed. Rimsky-Korsakov] Alexei Maslennikov (t), Prince Shuisky; Sofia Radio Chorus, Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded November 1970


THE RIMSKY-REVILERS LIKE TO WAX RHAPSODIC . . .