The pandemic upset many things, such as the premiere of the opera Prisoner of State, which David Lang composed based on Beethoven’s Fidelio, the only opera by the German musician, and “which speaks to us of love, loyalty and faithfulness, but which is not the work that generates the most admiration among the followers of the genius of Bonn”. These are statements by the director of L’Auditori, Robert Brufau, one of the entities that commissioned the Californian composer to compose this opera, together with the New York Philharmonic, De Doelen Concert Hall in Rotterdam, The Barbican in London, Bochum Symphony Orchestra Concertgebouw in Bruges and the Malmö Opera.
The commission was intended to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, born in 1770, and although Lang managed to premiere it at Lincoln Center in New York in 2019, the rest of the tour had to be canceled due to the pandemic. Now, after having traveled half of Europe, Prisoner of State closes the tour in Barcelona, ??with the state premiere at the Grec amphitheater, tonight.
For the occasion, there is a production led by the OBC and the men’s choir of Cor Jove de l’Orfeó Català and Cor de Cambra del Palau (male voices). The four soloists are Claron McFadden, Jarrett Ott, Davóne Tines and Alan Oke. Ludovic Morlot, director of the OBC for ten months, jokes about the postponement of the production: “I must be the only one who is happy about it, because that’s how I was able to be a part of it”.
Lang explains how the creation process was: “I saw a production of Fidelio when I was 21 years old. Every time you see a work about war or about climate change, it turns out that we already find this in Beethoven, who changed the whole concept of classical music. However, at that time I was on the extreme left, very revolutionary, and I came away very disappointed, I was disappointed that Beethoven could not talk openly about politics”.
In his rereading, Lang stripped Beethoven’s libretto: “At the beginning, when Fidelio disguises himself as a man and looks for a job in prison, it’s a comedy. Then I began to think that it might be possible to write this work again, unpacking all the things that were suffocating it. I took Beethoven’s librettos, three of them, and removed all the comedy, the romantic love and the happiness of the weddings, and left only the skeleton of the work.”
In Fidelio, the protagonist disguises herself as a man to work in the prison and free her man, who is imprisoned. Lang has maintained this history, but trying to understand it from the present, and that is why it has been profusely documented: “Fidelio was premiered in 1805, when the Napoleonic troops were in Vienna and Beethoven could not make an allegation against the empire, because it would not have been accepted. I don’t know about your country, but my country is terrible. We have a lot of prisoners, and a lot of them are for political reasons, because a prisoner can’t vote and so you prevent him from voting according to whom. There is a time of uncertainty in politics, but I don’t remember a time on Earth when everyone was happy and everything was working well.”
Lang, who became a musician and went to study in the USSR after attending a Shostakovich concert at the age of 9, issues a warning: “We can never relax because if we do, our rights will be taken away.”
