Drawing closely on his “Fidelio” installation in Lucerne’s KKL Concert Hall, the German photographer Stefan Heyne has created a projection screen with countless portraits, extending the stage action into the urban space. The faces on these photographs have had their eyes scratched our or airbrushed away, causing the persons depicted to lose their individuality and identity and to merge into a soundless chorus, a nameless mass of silence standing vicariously for the myriad nameless victims of violence and arbitrary rule.

Relics of the past are also found in the concert hall, traces recalling people who have disappeared. A pile of overcoats lying on the ground becomes a landscape in which history and individual destinies intersect, as they have over and over again since time immemorial. Above all this hovers the light of freedom in the form of a blinding sun.

Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio,” takes place in a prison, and its subject is rebellion against tyranny. The unambiguous imagery of this production, by stage director Tatjana Gürbaca and set designer Stefan Heyne, confronts us with the urgent timeliness of Beethoven’s opera of liberation. The things that Beethoven railed against in the early 19th century have not been consigned to the past, but continue unabated. Even today people all over the world disappear, the victims of enslavement and suppression.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL wishes to thank its Facebook fiends and all others for sending portrait photographs for the projection screen.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) “Fidelio” op. 72. Opera in two acts.
Semi-staged performance.

Mahler Chamber Orchestra | LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA | Arnold Schoenberg Choir | Claudio Abbado conductor | Tatjana Gürbaca director | Stefan Heyne stage design | Reinhard Traub light design Peter Mattei Don Fernando | Falk Struckmann Don Pizarro | Jonas Kaufmann Florestan | Nina Stemme Leonore | Christof Fischesser Rocco | Rachel Harnisch Marzelline | Christoph Strehl Jaquino
 
Both Fidelio performances on 12 and 15 August are sold out.