Fidelio – Beethoven 250
Kampe, Kaufmann & van Zweden – Gstaad Festival Orchestra II

Opera

Friday, 14 August 2020
7.30 pm, Gstaad Festival Tent

It is Beethoven's only opera... but what an opera! A concentration of his dramatic genius at the service of values emblematic of his thinking, deeply marked by the impetus of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution: freedom and fraternity. Inspired by a play by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly entitled Léonore ou l'amour conjugal [Leonora or Marital Love], his Fidelio stages a woman (Leonora) who does everything in her power to get her husband (Florestan) out of prison... including disguising herself as a man (under the name of Fidelio) to get inside. Presented in a concert version, this masterpiece is the opportunity for a two-fold come-back: that of star tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conductor Jaap van Zweden at the head of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra.