The spectacle is dedicated to the 200th year of the first performance of the work of art and to the 100th Anniversary of Boris Christoff

Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera will be performed for the second and last time this season at Sofia Opera and Ballet as concert performance on 8 June at 19.00 h. The new in this production is the including of texts of the well-known modern German philosopher, expert in political science and literary critic Walter Jens, one of the greatest fighters against Nazism and victim of its nightmare. His philosophical reflections with “Rocco’s story” are an integral part of the music dramaturgy of Beethoven’s masterpiece.

With its moving topics about heroism and freedom, the work of art is one of the greatest ever written. It continues to be a mighty symbol of freedom in our time, exactly as it was in the age of Napoleon, when it was created. The woven in the work text interacts of Jens are a logical replacement of the dialogues in the style of the “Singspiel”, with stories of the main character Rocco, whose role has taken the voice of the contemporary man, in this case Walter Jens himself. In Germany people called him “the little Voltaire” of the Federal Republic and he is known with the documentary “Missis Thomas Mann”. The exceptional, wide-awake and always warning with his pen publicistic figure of Jens confirms Beethoven’s appeal, that people from all over the world, not only the Germans from the recent past before the fall of the wall between “the East and the West, had one striving: freedom, democracy, justice, solidarity and security. This unites the people and is successfully bringing them together”. This is also the appeal of today of the intelligent politicians. In the concert performance of Sofia Opera “Fidelio” remarkable is also the participation of the applauded during many years performers of Royal Opera House in London and The Wagner Festival in Bayreuth – the bass from Austria Kurt Rydl and the German tenor Endrik Wottrich, who debuted in this title at Sofia Opera on 15 December 2013.

Endrik Wottrich will perform the role of the political prisoner Florestan, whose life is saved by his wife, Leonore – Mariana Zvetkova (Brünhilde in Wagner’s “Der Ring des Niebelungen” in Sofia). Biser Georgiev (Alberich in the same production) debuted as the tyrannical criminal Pizarro, and Kurt Rydl is making a remarkable Rocco, together with other artists of Sofia Opera, who have won recognition – Dimitar Stanchev as Don Fernando, and also Svetlana Pravcheva (Freya in “Das Rheingold”) and Krasimir Dinev (Mime in “Das Rheingold” and “Siegfried”). The actor Marius Donkin is in the role of the Narrator.

Grigor Palikarov will conduct the chorus and the orchestra of Sofia Opera and Ballet in the performance of Beethoven’s masterpiece. The spectacle continues about 2 hours and 45 minutes, with one interval. It is performed in German with Bulgarian subtitles.


 Fidelio
Opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven

Characters and performers:

Leonore
MARIANA ZVETKOVA

Florestan
ENDRIK WOTTRICH

Rocco
KURT RYDL  

Marzelline
SILVANA PRAVCHEVA

Jaquino
KRASIMIR DINEV

Don Pizarro
BISER GEORGIEV  

Don Fernando
DIMITAR STANCHEV  

First Prisoner
NIKOLAY IVANOV

Second Prisoner
ANTON RADEV

Narrator  
MARIUS DONKIN
   
Conductor
GRIGOR PALIKAROV

Director
HANS-JOACHIM FREY

Scenography
PAVLINA KOTSEVA