From around the world: Florence.(International)(Otello)(La Clemenza di Tito)(Fidelio)(Opera Review)

None of the three operas staged during this year's Maggio Musicale boasted an ideal cast, but the inaugural production, Beethoven's Fidelio (seen at the Teatro Comunale on May 21), proved memorable nonetheless, thanks to conductor Paavo Jarvi's ability to invest every bar of the opera with an extraordinary degree of moral tension (a rare quality even among the greatest conductors today), and to the unusual emotional scope and sensitivity of Robert Carsen's production. There was nothing original about his idea of setting the opera in a concentration camp (the single bare set was designed by Radu Boruzescu), yet Carsen succeeded in bringing renewed immediacy to what in other hands has become a tired convention. His use of supernumeraries was never distracting but always designed to bring the story into tighter focus, and the interplay among characters was entirely natural and convincing--both in its psychological truthfulness and in its combination of different expressive registers (everyday banter alternating with questions of life and death). The emergence from the dungeons of the prisoners--played by actors, while chorus sang in the pit--was staged with an exceptional understanding of what suffering implies and feels like. The dominant personality in both acts was Giorgio Surjan's Rocco, an acutely observed, deeply human portrayal, enriched by subtly modulated legato singing. Elizabeth Whitehouse (Leonore), Rachel Harnisch (Marzelline) and Jorg Schneider (Jacquino) also acted convincingly and sang musically, and Gidon Saks proved a particularly menacing Pizarro, though somewhat approximate in pitch.

Act II was less remarkable, partly because Stephen Gould proved neither eloquent nor vocally at ease as Florestan, and partly because Carsen used the opera's finale to parody the media-obsessed peacemakers of today: Don Fernando (an imposing Stephen Milling) made his entrance from the orchestra, surrounded by ...