is the
woman who takes her fate into her own hands and fearlessly chances
every risk for the sake of the man she loves. And just as Wagner wrote
the best passage in the "Dutchman" for the moment when Senta promises
to be faithful through life and death, so Beethoven in the prison
scene of "Fidelio" wrote as tremendous a passage as even he ever
conceived for the moment when Leonora makes up her mind at all costs
to save the life of the wretched prisoner whose grave she is helping
to dig. The tale is simple enough--there is scarcely enough of it to
call a tale. Leonora's husband, Florestan, has somehow fallen into the
power of his enemy Pizarro, who imprisons him and then says he is
dead. Leonora disbelieves this, and, disguising herself as a boy and
taking the name of Fidelio, hires herself as an assistant to Rocco,
the jailer of the fortress in which Florestan is confined. At that
time the news arrives that an envoy of the king is coming to see that
no injustice is being done by Pizarro. Pizarro has been hoping to
starve Florestan slowly to death; but now he sees the necessity of
more rapid action. He therefore tells Rocco to dig a grave in
Florestan's cell, and he himself will do the necessary murder. This
brings about the great prison scene. Florestan lies asleep in a
corner; Leonora is not sure whether she is helping to dig his grave or
the grave of some other unlucky wretch; but while she works she takes
her resolution--whoever he may be, she will risk all consequences and
save him. Pizarro arrives, and is about to kill Florestan, when
Leonora presents a pistol to his head; and, before he has quite had
time to recover, a trumpet call is heard, signalling the arrival of
the envoy. Pizarro knows the game is up, and Florestan that his wife
has saved him. This, I declare, is the only dramatic scene in the
play--here the thing ends: excepting it, there is no real incident.
The business at the beginning, about the jailer's daughter refusing to
have anything more to do with her former sweetheart, and falling in
love with the supposed Fidelio, is merely silly; Rocco's song,
elegantly translated in one edition, "Life is nothing without
money"--Heaven knows whether it was intended to be humorous--is
stupid; Pizarro's stage-villainous song of vengeance is unnecessary;
the arrangement of the crime is a worry. These, and in fact all that
comes before the great scene, are entirely superfluous, the purest
piffle, very tiresome. Mo