This “Fidelio” isn’t just excellently sung, including by the Met’s sensitive chorus: Jürgen Flimm’s fresh-as-ever staging from 2000 is also led with clarity, drive and insight by the conductor Susanna Mälkki.
“This “Fidelio” isn’t just excellently sung, including by the Met’s sensitive chorus: Jürgen Flimm’s fresh-as-ever staging from 2000 is also led with clarity, drive and insight by the conductor Susanna Mälkki.”
“It has taken 45 years to see and hear such an engrossing Fidelio that held me right to its happy ending. Why was this? Well, it needed those seven stars in the cast and Susanna Mälkki’s very impressive conducting. She inspired the impeccable Met Orchestra into an account of Beethoven’s colourful score which took no prisoners (!), banished any possible longueurs and imbued it all with a compelling humanity and revolutionary spirit.”
“The production opened Tuesday night with fine singing up and down the cast, affecting choruses, and mostly superb orchestral playing under conductor Susanna Mälkki… Conductor Mälkki gave an appropriately upbeat feeling to the Fidelio Overture—a lighter scene-setter than the massive Leonore overtures the composer first tried with this opera—then maintained a brisk pace through the comical and darker scenes of Act I. She also expertly managed the long climb from the frozen desolation of Florestan in his cell to his dramatic rescue by Leonore.”
The New York Classical Review
“Susanna Mälkki’s leadership was both clean and clear and brought out stunning playing from the Met Orchestra – especially the woodwinds”
Bachtrack