Date: July 22
Location: Teatre Grec
To celebrate Beethoven Year in 2020, L'Auditori, together with prestigious international partners, commissioned a major new work from the New York composer David Lang - a powerful retelling of the opera Fidelio.
This project was postponed because of the pandemic, but three years later than planned, David Lang's new work still casts light on Beethoven’s timeless themes: love, the abuse of power, the suppression of individual rights through political intrigue. Can the most heartfelt love secure a man’s freedom?
David Lang, one of the world’s leading composers, re-interprets the opera Fidelio and casts it in a more contemporary and political light. Ludwig van Beethoven took years to write the definitive version of his only work for the stage, not only changing the title (initially it was called Leonora) but also producing several versions of the libretto. Lang has written his own libretto for this version of the narrative without using a single note of Beethoven’s music.
In the original opera, Leonora’s love is enough to free her loved one, unjustly imprisoned for political reasons. Lang in Prisoner of the State questions the romantic idealism of this in the face of 21st century political norms.
Elkhanah Pulitzer’s compelling staging places evil and incarceration center stage: the large chorus of prisoners – present throughout the performance – is the dominant visual and musical focus. The Governor (Lang’s Pizarro) suggests in an aria it is “better to be feared, than loved”. Lang’s prisoner, just like Beethoven’s, discovered in a claustrophobic underground cell, experiences joy at being reunited with his “Leonora”. But in Pulitzer’s staging, we are in no doubt that Lang’s Fidelio takes place in a less forgiving, more familiar world than Beethoven’s.
The Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC), with the prisoners chorus and the four soloists, plays the leading role in a production already celebrated as a compelling and timely reframing of the original.
Info: https://www.barcelona.cat/grec/en/show/david-lang-prisoner-state
Location: Teatre Grec
To celebrate Beethoven Year in 2020, L'Auditori, together with prestigious international partners, commissioned a major new work from the New York composer David Lang - a powerful retelling of the opera Fidelio.
This project was postponed because of the pandemic, but three years later than planned, David Lang's new work still casts light on Beethoven’s timeless themes: love, the abuse of power, the suppression of individual rights through political intrigue. Can the most heartfelt love secure a man’s freedom?
David Lang, one of the world’s leading composers, re-interprets the opera Fidelio and casts it in a more contemporary and political light. Ludwig van Beethoven took years to write the definitive version of his only work for the stage, not only changing the title (initially it was called Leonora) but also producing several versions of the libretto. Lang has written his own libretto for this version of the narrative without using a single note of Beethoven’s music.
In the original opera, Leonora’s love is enough to free her loved one, unjustly imprisoned for political reasons. Lang in Prisoner of the State questions the romantic idealism of this in the face of 21st century political norms.
Elkhanah Pulitzer’s compelling staging places evil and incarceration center stage: the large chorus of prisoners – present throughout the performance – is the dominant visual and musical focus. The Governor (Lang’s Pizarro) suggests in an aria it is “better to be feared, than loved”. Lang’s prisoner, just like Beethoven’s, discovered in a claustrophobic underground cell, experiences joy at being reunited with his “Leonora”. But in Pulitzer’s staging, we are in no doubt that Lang’s Fidelio takes place in a less forgiving, more familiar world than Beethoven’s.
The Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC), with the prisoners chorus and the four soloists, plays the leading role in a production already celebrated as a compelling and timely reframing of the original.
Info: https://www.barcelona.cat/grec/en/show/david-lang-prisoner-state