A “Fidelio” of noble presence in Gstaad

All it took was one big name for the Gstaad Menuhin Festival to fill up last Thursday. Nearly 1,800 people came to watch the concert version of Fidelio, with Jonas Kaufmann playing the character of Florestan. But the role that the Munich tenor sings in Beethoven’s opera is not the most important. The political prisoner Florestan does not appear until the second act, following more than 60 minutes of music, while the figure of his wife, namely Leonore – disguised as a man, Fidelio, in order to interfere incognito in the dungeon of his beloved – dominates the whole opera.