Leeds town hall; Theatre Royal Glasgow; Grange Park Opera; Northern Opera Group, all available online; St John’s Smith Square, London
Opera North’s gripping Beethoven led a week of inventive filmed opera, from Così the gameshow to Cinders out on location
Beethoven’s 250th birthday finally arrived last week. We shouldn’t mind, for his sake, that so many brilliantly planned celebrations worldwide had to be spiked. There’s been enough Beethoven in the air, and on air – notably Donald Macleod’s year-spanning Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3 – to confirm this unknowable genius as a fountainhead of western music. We should, and do, mind on account of the musicians for the loss of their art and earnings; and for the organisers who paddle frantically to make concerts happen, un-happen and re-happen on a daily basis. So when the chorus and soloists of Opera North, nearing the end of an enthralling live stream of Fidelio from Leeds town hall, sang “Blessed be this day, which we/ longed for and did not dare to expect”, our hearts were full.
You can pick many singular moments in Beethoven’s only opera, from the hushed chorus of prisoners as they stagger into daylight, to the music at the start of Act 2, when the solo oboe pierces the orchestral shadows like a torch beam. From this performance, with Rachel Nicholls fearless and candid as Leonore and Toby Spence lyrical but strong as Florestan, I’d choose the finale: an unparalleled display of human joy and musical euphoria, soloists and chorus in alternating surges of energy, voices soaring ever higher in an ecstatic cry for truth and freedom.