by Jeff Counts

In opera, political prisoners are as common as gods and kings. It is highly effective and deeply moving, this image of protagonists both large and small singing through the proverbial (and sometimes literal) bars of their subjugation. In addition to Florestan in FIDELIO there is Angelotti in TOSCA, Goryanchikov in Janacek’s FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, Joan herself from Honegger’s JEANNE D’ARC AU BÛCHER, the nuns from DIALOGUES OF THE CARMÉLITES, the unnamed “Prisoner” from Dallapiccola’s IL PRIGIONIERO and many others. 21st Century variations on the theme include works based on Nelson Mandela and Leonard Peltier but it isn’t always so obvious. Verdi’s entire canon, which also includes a version of the Joan of Arc story, has been viewed (with a bit of free historical “back-reading”) as a single grand paean to his oppressed Italian countrymen. Idealism and chains can lurk nearly everywhere in opera, if you look hard enough and symbolically enough.

The individual fates that await the members of this incarcerated class of operatic characters run the full range of possibility. There is death, of course – pure, simple and in varied abundance. There is also that sinister psychological game between captors and captured in which hope is offered and hope is inexorably dashed. There is martyrdom, both willing and unwilling. And yes, for Florestan at least, there is rescue. The role of the prisoner archetype in opera’s alternate reality is to give voice to some basic and elemental aspects of the human condition. Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar spoke most eloquently of this in his Sympathy (1899) when he wrote “I know why the caged bird sings…When he beats his bars and he would be free.” We know why they sing too. It is not necessary for us to have personal experience with jails to innately understand the desire to get out of one.

Another important feature of our sympathy for the dungeon-bound Florestan is the unjustness of his sentence. As FIDELIO opens, he is locked up for exposing the crimes of the nobleman Don Pizzaro, a nasty fellow that happens to serve as governor of a prison near Seville. Florestan states his case and predicts his end quite clearly in the monologue at the beginning of Act 2. “Boldly I dared to speak the truth,” he sings, “and fetters are my reward. Willingly I endure all suffering and end my course pitiably…I have done my duty!” These lines highlight an additional characteristic of the prisoner persona in opera. He is stoic in the face of isolation and slow death and has in him the ingredients of a hero. Like the Carmélite Prioress comforting her nuns on the eve of their execution and Dallapiccola’s “Prisoner” whispering “freedom” after being tricked by his jailer, Florestan gives us something to root for. Whether or not he is to be free again, we applaud his choices and share his moral convictions.

As compelling a case as Florestan presents on his own, the real star of his story is his wife Lenore. She brings something to the tale that is not regularly available to most operatic inmates, the possibility of Earthly deliverance and triumph. From the source material, hers was the courage and devotion that most impressed Beethoven and he rewarded her character richly in his re-telling. She embodies the unequivocal steadfastness of the composer’s own ethical outlook at a time when the concept of liberty was under Napoleonic siege in Europe. Though not technically a prisoner herself, Lenore is indeed chained by the actions of both her husband and his keeper. Because of her abiding love for Florestan, freedom has just as surely been withheld from her by Don Pizzaro and she takes on the challenge of defeating him with impressive resolve. “First kill his wife!” she cries as she shields Florestan from Pizzaro’s blade.

How much of Napoleon’s growing infamy Beethoven wrote into the Don Pizzaro character is a matter for the individual listener to determine. There is no doubt however about what he intended for his two “prisoners.” They represent the small but potent voice against injustice that still sings out in opera today. Florestan spoke up against it to his own peril and Lenore faced it bravely to save him. It is possible that Beethoven saw some of that same idealistic fervor in the earlier, pre-“Emperor” Napoleon of the revolution and that, maybe, both versions of the man might exist simultaneously in the opera. Regardless, the drama of FIDELIO suited the black-and-white political opinions of the composer and has succeeded in tapping the aversion to tyranny in all of us ever since. Just like the real-life parallels in Beethoven’s time, there are simply too many in our own to ignore.

Though love has not been enough to save all of the political hostages of opera history, it certainly was for proud Florestan. While so many others end up at the stake, he walks free thanks to Lenore. Fittingly, the chorus of newly freed men (expanded in Beethoven’s 1814 revision, incidentally a year of severe decline for Napoleon’s reign) gets the last word…

“Never can we too much hymn the savior of her husband’s life!”

Jeff Counts ©2011