For reasons best known to Herr Doktor Jetlag, I have not slept for nearly thirty hours, but nevertheless I am, of my own free will, going to watch a six hour Fidelio rehearsal tonight, here in Taichung with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. The first concert is tomorrow (in a venue I've not yet seen) and then on Saturday, there's an outdoor concert at the very scenic Sun Moon Lake — it's part of the Sun Moon Lake Festival — to what we've been told will be an audience of ten thousand. Ten thousand.
Anyway, that's all to come; rehearsal first, which will be the first I've attended and, more significantly, the first time I've heard The Tenor In My Life sing even a note of Florestan. I understand he's rather good at though; shall report back on same. My well-established soprano partisanship has always made me a fool for Marzelline, though; there's something about that Act I aria of hers that just gets me. Every time. I know that the quartet which follows should be the opera's first Big Transcendent Moment, but thanks to Marzelline, I'm always teary before it's even begun.
I've already posted Lucia Popp's glorious rendition of said aria here at least once, so instead, here's one I've just watched for the first time and which I think is also seriously gorgeous. Obligatory lump in throat already rising. Here we go. Elizabeth Gale.
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