"An angel Leonoren"

If you take a closer look at Beethoven, you will firstly notice that many of his works originate from philosophical and political ideas or are at least influenced by them.

Regardless of whether it is his Eroica, his Fifth or Ninth Symphony with Schiller's Ode to Joy, his great piano sonatas or Fidelio, for example.

And secondly, Fidelio brings together so many different influences - the Enlightenment, Biedermeier, Sturm und Drang, Romanticism, Beethoven the symphonist, his personal convictions and longings - that this work eludes too much realism.

In short, it is not an opera in the conventional sense - and that is why the score poses such a great challenge for directors.

Beethoven repeatedly pushed boundaries in every respect: formally, programmatically and in terms of the technical demands placed on the performers. This is also the case here in Fidelio.

This was not an end in itself, not a mere pleasure in exploring the unfamiliar, but a matter of intellectual and moral conviction. The often quoted phrase "Let it go to the heart again", which Beethoven prefaced the Missa solemnis with, has nothing to do with sentimentality, but rather breathes the ideal of his time, which can be found in all of Beethoven's works: freedom, equality, brotherhood.

An ideal, of course, that must first be laboriously achieved. It is no coincidence that Beethoven emphasizes the line "Above the stars he must dwell" in the last movement of his 9th Symphony in the G major passage "Seid umschlungen Millionen" with a fortissimo and a striking change of key after the symbolic E flat major. Beethoven interprets Schiller here in the sense of per aspera ad astra. And we interpret Fidelio in accordance with Beethoven's philosophical conviction.

Our concept symbolizes this ever-increasing growth, this arduous path to the light, to the figure of light, which manifests itself here in Leonore. For this reason alone, categorizations such as "the beginning of Fidelio is a singspiel, the end is like an oratorio" fall short. Nikolaus Habjan and I had many conversations in advance about this misunderstanding, about seeing the first numbers after the overture as trivial, pleasantly rippling introductory numbers and only really arriving in Fidelio with Leonore's aria.

With him, these scenes, specifically the opening duet Marzelline/Jaquino or Rocco's golden aria, do not slip into ludicrousness, traditional character clichés are not perpetuated, but the complexity of each individual character is revealed. Habjan proves that there is something in all of them that serves to achieve the aforementioned ideal.

Often through tiny details. Take, for example, the beginning after the overture, this short introduction to the duet: you can simply pass it over and dismiss it as light banter, or interpret the first motif, consisting of four notes, as Jaquino's restlessness.

But this gives these four notes a very special atmospheric impression, which should convey to the audience right from the start that Jaquino is not a simple, woodcut comedy type, but a highly ambivalent character who is driven by feelings and emotions.

And when I deliberately have Rocco's singer start a little too early in his aria "Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben" after the short introduction, you automatically sense Rocco's greed - which Habjan also emphasizes in the production - and his almost erotic relationship with money. And as a result, we are automatically miles away from a leisurely, cozy play-opera aria.

Florestan has uncovered injustice, which certainly characterizes him as virtuous. That is no mean feat. But in her individualism, Leonore is a Sturm und Drang figure par excellence: against all reason, against all rules, against all danger, against all prospect of success, she decides to save her husband and even goes into the lion's den to do so.

And what enables her to do this? Love, the highest thing that humans are capable of. That's what makes her so admirable, what elevates her to the ideal.

Beethoven really struggled with the genre of music theater, as two worlds actually collided. Even his attempt to bring a mythological-philosophical figure to the stage as a ballet with The Creatures of Prometheus had something absurd about it that could not work.

And Beethoven, who used to express his intentions through pure music, found it difficult from the outset to come to terms with opera, which thrives on the interplay between text and music.

Beethoven's obligatory rhythmic pulse, for example, which always pushes towards something, is fundamentally opposed to the ups and downs or the flow of speech of a libretto, and his way of composing, developing a large whole out of tiny motifs, is inherently unsuited to the basic character of an opera.

And that despite the third-rate libretto. (laughs) Just as all later composers measured themselves against Beethoven's symphonies, Mozart's operatic creations were regarded by many as a model.

It was not for nothing that E.T.A. Hoffmann called Don Giovanni "the opera of all operas". Beethoven knew this and looked for a way to find his way in this genre in a different way. And as a great symphonic composer, what could be more obvious to him than - as Wagner would later do in Tristan und Isolde, for example - to create Fidelio 's musical nervous system in the orchestra?

As a result, essential things are expressed here that are not, or only partially, expressed on stage. This is already apparent in the second number, in the fast C major section of the Marcellina aria: the purifying power of the fire of enlightenment that blazes here actually has nothing to do with the sung text, but indicates that the next Leonore is already growing up here. Or: why do three horns sound in the great Leonore aria? Because Beethoven directly follows on from his Eroica, in which the horns are played as a heroic instrument. And in the love key of E major!

At this point, Beethoven expresses through music alone what I said earlier: that Leonore's heroism is only made possible by love. During rehearsals, I regularly remind the singers to think about the subtext in their interpretation, because it is only then that the audience intuitively starts additional strings vibrating. But Nikolaus Habjan, too, which I very much welcome, repeatedly works out aspects in the staging that are only addressed in the orchestra pit.

In this context, for example, it is interesting to look at the last bars of the score: Unlike in the 5th Symphony, where Beethoven really celebrates the final point, it is musically absent in Fidelio. Everyone rejoices, everything seems wonderful - but the strangely abrupt musical ending conveys something else. Despite everything, the ideal of freedom, equality and brotherhood has obviously not yet become reality, not even on the theater stage. It remains a utopia.

Sure, for historical reasons you can show the two earlier versions from time to time. It happens occasionally. But it is simply a fact that Fidelio has become better and better over the course of the work process. So why not perform the last, best actual state in a work in progress?

I've done without it once in my life and realized that the finale needs that final kick to really take off. By inserting the third Leonore overture - at exactly the point Mahler had chosen - the final focus on the philosophical idea discussed earlier succeeds even better and is therefore certainly in Beethoven's spirit.

The great thing about interpretation is that you enter into a relationship with a work of art, each time from the point of view of where you are at that moment. So the relationship changes.

I recently listened to Schubert's A major Sonata in a recording with Radu Lupu from his middle years and then in a recording made much later. The same piece, the same interpreter - and yet two very different results, both of which have their merits.

in 2015, I conducted a new production of Fidelio in Salzburg in a production by Claus Guth, who took a very gloomy view of the piece. Now, ten years later, I meet a director who approaches the score with an incredible youthful enthusiasm, a real enthusiasm. Both have done something to my approach, because working with a director naturally influences what I do.

As is so often the case in the theater, it's a matter of give and take. Of course, it's not the case that I now suddenly direct things fifty percent faster or slower. But a new point of view enables me to discover and reveal further layers in a work.

We experience something similar in the color variation series of Andy Warhol. Basically, we keep looking at certain masterpieces precisely because changing parameters always reveal new weightings, new nuances.

Last but not least, the spirit of the respective epoch, the social discussions, the current narratives influence our ways of seeing and interpreting. Fidelio is a perfect example of this, as you can see from its reception history alone - including political abuse - at the Vienna State Opera.

Or just think of the legendary Dresden production of Fidelio by Christine Mielitz in 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The city was considered the headquarters of the GDR secret service, which inspired Mielitz to make the entire audience in this production feel as if they were also inmates of the Pizarro prison.

She even had all the doors locked at the premiere to reinforce this impression. In retrospect, the fact that a certain Vladimir Putin was also demonstrably sitting among the various secret service agents who were of course also present in the auditorium lends additional poignancy to the premiere at the time.

We simply cannot escape the time in which we live. But it is not only momentous events that are reflected in a performance. Even seemingly trivial things such as a change in the weather, a singer's state of health or the composition of the audience can influence the performance.

We performers try to get closer to a work of art, sometimes better, sometimes worse. And since there is no ultimate version, it is always just an attempt. For me as a conductor, however, the greatest compliment is when people don't talk about my interpretation after the curtain falls, but about the piece. Because then I know that I have done justice to my task of bringing the work closer to the audience.