Beethoven’s Only Opera and Its “Prisoners’ Chorus”

Ludwig von Beethoven wrote only one opera, Fidelio, and it cost him so much vexation as he worked on it, and re-worked it, and re-worked it yet again, that he said he would never write another one. And he kept his word. The history and background of this work, therefore, is long and complicated, well beyond the scope of this post that focuses on just one chorus from the work. But here’s a brief overview:

We know that Beethoven was quite taken with the (supposed) ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and brotherhood. This rather diffuse and wayward event began in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille prison, progressed through the establishment of the French Republic which rapidly devolved into the Reign of Terror, and then eventually resulted in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to power. By 1799 Napoleon had declared himself dictator, and he would be crowned Emperor 5 years later in 1804. By 1805 he was ruler of all Europe, including Austria. In the midst of all this drama and trauma Beethoven had become interested in a French play titled Léonore, ou l’Amour Conjugal (Leonora, or Marital Love). The play couldn’t be set to music directly, of course, so Beethoven needed a librettist. He also needed government approval in order for his opera to be staged publicly, and an opera set in France and having as its theme the evils of political oppression wasn’t going to fly with the Napoleonic government that was in place at the time. So the setting was shifted to Spain, and the emphasis was shifted to the heroine’s faithfulness to her imprisoned husband and away from that thorny issue of civil rights. There were three versions in the end: an unsuccessful 1805 three-act premier, then a trimmed-down two-act version the next year, and a final revision in 1814 as the Congress of Vienna was meeting to decide the future of post-Napoleonic Europe. This last included an additional choral ending that emphasized more clearly the significance of the newly liberated prisoners. That chorus, however, is not the subject of this article and is indeed never called the “Prisoners’ Chorus.” Instead, it’s the chorus at the end of Act I which describes only a brief liberation before the prisoners are hustled back into the prison which was given that title. And, speaking of titles, it is accepted practice to call only the final version of the opera Fidelio, with the earlier ones bearing the name of its heroine Leonora.

The plot of the opera as a whole includes some well-worn tropes. Leonora has to disguise herself as a male in order to gain access to the prison where her husband is kept, so of course the jailer’s daughter falls in love with her as a him. Sigh. And of course the daughter already has a lover who becomes very jealous of Leonora in her persona as Fidelio. And of course Florestan can’t recognize his own wife when she shows up in his cell. To be fair about that last point, the poor Florestan has been slowly starved over the past couple of months, and the cell is pretty dark. But still! You have to have quite a bit of willing suspension of disbelief sometimes to enter into these plots. (Don’t get me started on all of the ridiculous, unbelievable nonsense in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, which depends on all sorts of disguises that wouldn’t have fooled the blindest person for one second. But I digress.)

In spite of what we might think of as plot problems, no one has ever criticized the music (except to say that it’s exceptionally hard to sing–Beethoven wasn’t really much of a vocal composer). The “Prisoners’ Chorus” takes place after Leonora pushes for a short prisoners’ respite in the garden:

Enough of this.
Rocco [the jailer], often I have begged of you to allow the poor prisoners, in this dismal cell immured, to come and breathe the pure air of this garden.
Though often promised, you have never yet done it.
To-day the weather is so beautiful!
The Governor never comes at this time of day.

Marcellina, Rocco’s daughter, also joins in the pleading, more because she wants to curry favor with Fidelio/Leonora than anything else, and Rocco relents. The stage directions then say: “Leonora and Jacquino [the jail’s porter who is in love with Marcellina] open the Prison-doors, then withdraw with Marcellina to the background, and watch with interest the Prisoners, as they gradually enter.” Here’s what the men sing:

Here’s a wonderful resource for this particular piece, a professional reading of the German lyrics:

Choral/concert versions of the piece sometimes just have the chorus as a whole sing the entire time without bothering to have the soloists. This omission of solo parts simplifies matters for the conductor, of course, but it’s a nice touch to include individuals as well as the group. We respond to life’s circumstances in both ways.

It seems appropriate to first include a video of this chorus as part of an actual operatic performance, since that’s how it was first conceived:

Fidelio has been staged in many ways to bring out its relevance for today’s circumstances. The Santa Fe Opera, for instance, has set it in a concentration camp. But one of the most relevant, and touching, settings is in a modern prison as staged by Heartbeat Opera. Here’s a video about that production:

And, finally, since this post is indeed about the choral version of the piece, here’s a good one:

© Debi Simons