Fidelio
TULSA OPERA & OPERA COLUMBUS (1993)
FIDELIO by Ludwig van Beethoven
Conductor: David Effron
Cast: K. Day, A. Clouthier, G. Dolter, R. Caine. C. Freeman, W. Rhodes, D. Travis
Production: G. Bruce (asst. director), J. Conklin (scenery), C. Zuber (clothes), C. Akerlind (lighting)
“For the last of his five seasons as artistic director of Tulsa Opera. Nicholas Muni contrived a Seville trilogy of Carmen, Fidelio and ll Barbiere di Siviglia, with a thoughtful overlap of singers and sets. Muni’s Fidelio (Feb. 27) proved strong on every level. John Conklin’s sets were pictures to burn themselves into the memo1y. It’s hard to imagine a more sinister dungeon than his crumbling classical room with bricked-up doors, huge chunks of stone pediments piled randomly and a vast iron scaffolding crumpled onto the scene…the production reflected Muni’s attentive but unobtrusive direction.”
– Scott Cantrell, Opera News
“…it was an imaginative production with stunning sets and a strong cast of singers. What attracted my attention to the company was the name of Nicholas Muni, one of the most innovative opera directors around these days, almost never content with the routine of operatic traditions. The best of Muni’s work is riveting. But what would Muni do with a smallish company well off the name-brand circuit, with a $1.4 million budget for three productions? Well, for the current season he chose three operas (Carmen, Fidelio and Il Barbiere di Siviglia) with a common setting: Seville. Then he hired one of the most creative designers now active on the opera scene, John Conklin, to design the three productions with overlapping scenic elements. Muni also cast the three operas with a thoughtful overlap of singers from one to another. True to form, Conklin’s sets were images to burn themselves into the memory. The iron-gated walls of the first scene were backed by a black and white abstract-expressionist scrim that might have been painted by Franz Klein. At the end, shackled prisoners on scaffolds framed a public square with a gleaming victory monument and, behind, a breathtaking sunrise. Muni essayed no radical reconception of the opera but there were distinctive touches.”
– Scott Cantrell, The Kansas City Star
“It’s unclear just why it took Tulsa Opera 45 years to offer a production of Beethoven’s only work for the stage. but local audiences should be grateful that the producers took their time – for the “Fidelio” that opened Saturday night as the second part of the group’s Spanish Trilogy represents the kind of ideal marriage of talent and subject that comes along all too rarely. Much credit should go to director Nicholas Muni for keeping this difficult work so eminently watchable, even when the material he’s been given to work with threatens to collapse into a chamber recital. Muni has managed to coax the local audience into enjoying some remarkably imaginative and realistically acted productions of works that in other hands had begun to creak with age. It’s fitting that this final production of Muni’s should serve as a reminder of how quickly and efficiently he’s pulled the local opera scene into the 20th century. We can only hope that his successor is intelligent and talented enough to pick up that cue and continue ushering Tulsa Opera into the new century that’s just around the corner.”
– James Vance, The Tulsa World
“Tulsa Opera’s production of “Fidelio” is a solid piece of work and director Nicholas Muni mines it for all its considerable melodramatic potential. Under Muni’s direction, the improbable begins to makes sense; the staging is often as striking as the singing.”
– Doug Jones, The Tulsa Sentinel