The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 2

Welcome to what we might call "The Florestan Test"
We should talk about this at some point, but these two points in Florestan's monologue crystallize what separates him from the normal run of humans.

Moment 1
Note especially: the vocal and orchestral explosion on "Ketten" ("chains")
[NOTE: We pick up here in bar 3 and continue just into bar 8.]




Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded 1970

Moment 2
Note especially: Florestan's emphatic repetitions of "Pflicht" ("duty")
[NOTE: Our clip runs from bar 2 to the start of the Poco Allegro.]



Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Covent Garden Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Testament, recorded live, Feb. 24, 1961

by Ken

Where we are: Last week we took time off from the inquiry we began the week before into the minister Don Fernando and his literally life-saving arrival in the nick of time in the final scene of Fidelio "The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 1"): Who is he? What's right and what's wrong with his miraculous arrival? And what does it all mean for us? We paused to take a closer look at the protagonists for whom the Minister's arrival means miraculous rescue, Leonore Florestan and her imprisoned and near-death husband.

We did that by means of reconstituting a 2012 Sunday Classics post, in a preview, "Put these two little orchestral excerpts together, and you'll know the subject of this week's main post," and main post, "Meet the Florestans, Beethoven's supercouple." Which was okay as far as it went; it just didn't go far enough. Notably we looked, as we did in 2012, at Florestan's Act II-opening dungeon monologue, breaking it into several parts and hearing an assortment of tenors tackle them. What I really wanted to do, and had wanted to back in 2012, was to look at the monologue almost word by word, musical emphasis by musical emphasis, and that's what I aimed to do today.

It hasn't worked out, so for now the two examples will have to serve. I'm not going to go so far as to say that Florestan's monologue,definitely including the spiritually as well as physically gloom-and-doom-ridden orchestral introduction, is the most remarkable music ever written. I will say that I don't know of any more remarkable music.


SO HERE'S WHAT I PROPOSE --

Sunday Classics snapshots: Lucia's last happy snap

Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti at the Met in 1987

LUCIA: Ah! On the breezes
will come my ardent sighs.
You will hear in the murmuring sea
the echo of my grieving
Thinking that I feed on sighs and grief,
shed a bitter tear then on this ring.
Ah, on this ring then!
Ah, on this ring then!
Ah, on that ring then!

Joan Sutherland (s), Lucia; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Tullio Serafin, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1959

by Ken

I know we're making microscopic progress toward our goal, that other Verdian musical dramatization of the aging process (besides Germont's aria "Di Provenza" in La Traviata, by way of the "double aria" format Verdi inherited from the Italian bel cantists. And this week we're slowing down even further.

Last week we heard Lucia di Lammermoor's great Scene 2 double aria as she awaited her secret lover, Edgardo, near the fountain on his family's ruined Scottish estate. I thought this week we would move on, or rather back, to the Scene 1 double aria of Lucia's brother, Lord Enrico Ashton and maybe get as far as the way he treats his sister. But even though we left Lucia singing rapturously of her love for Edgardo, a rare moment of unbridled happiness for her, I don't think we can leave her there. We really need to "see" her meeting with Edgardo. Here are four musical snapshots.


(1) ENTER EDGARDO