[Met Performance] CID:131000



Fidelio
Metropolitan Opera House, Sat, February 22, 1941 Matinee Broadcast





Fidelio (65)
Ludwig van Beethoven | Joseph Sonnleithner
Leonore
Kirsten Flagstad

Florestan
Ren? Maison

Don Pizarro
Julius Huehn

Rocco
Alexander Kipnis

Marzelline
Marita Farell

Jaquino
Karl Laufk?tter

Don Fernando
Herbert Janssen

First Prisoner
Emery Darcy

Second Prisoner
John Gurney


Conductor
Bruno Walter





Rebroadcast on Sirius Metropolitan Opera

Review 1:

Review of Jerome D. Bohm in the Herald Tribune

Walter Directs "Fidelio" Again at Metropolitan

Mme. Flagstad Is Leonore in Opera by Beethoven, Maison and Kipnis Sing

Bruno Walter directed the second performance of the season of Beethoven's "Fidelio" at the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday afternoon, again giving a highly dramatic, moving and ennobling account of the score, which reached its apex in a superb performance of the third "Leonore" overture before the second scene of the last act.

The cast was that of the previous presentation, with Kirsten Flagstad as Leonore, Ren? Maison as Florestan, Alexander Kipnis as Rocco, Julius Huehn as Don Pizarro, Herbert Janssen as Don Fernando, Marita Farell as Marzelline, Karl Laufk?tter as Jacquino and Emery Darcy and John Gurney as first and second prisoners.

Mme. Flagstad's conception of Leonore does not yet rank with her great Wagnerian delineations. Beethoven makes demands on her voice in the way of flexibility which she meets carefully, but without the emotional abandon essential to full realization of her intentions.

Her singing of the "Abscheulicher" aria and of the music of the rescue scene with its deliriously joyous duet, "Namenloser Freude," brings with it much that is tonally beautiful, but there is not enough intensity or inwardness in her conception to really move the listener to the core, as he should be moved, although there are indications that perhaps in time the Norwegian soprano will reach greater interpretive heights here, too, as she has in the portrayals of Isolde and Br?nnhilde.

The Florestan of Mr. Maison was affectingly and sometimes poignantly voiced. Mr. Kipnis's assumption of the part of beneficent jailer, Rocco, was both vocally and dramatically compelling. Miss Farell, aside from some spread top tones, sang agreeably, and her Marzelline is, pictorially viewed, one of the most convincing. Mr. Lauk?tter's Jacquino and Mr. Janssen's sympathetically voiced Don Fernando contributed valuably to a performance which has but one serious blemish, the Don Pizarro of Mr. Huehn, which is voiced without tonal pithiness and is quite absurd as a piece of characterization.



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