David Lang: Prisoner of the State

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Image courtesy of Grec Festival de Barcelona.

This project was postponed because of the pandemic, but three years later than planned, David Lang's new work still casts light on Beethoven’s timeless themes: love, the abuse of power, the suppression of individual rights through political intrigue. Can the most heartfelt love secure a man’s freedom? David Lang, one of the world’s leading composers, re-interprets the opera Fidelio and casts it in a more contemporary and political light. Ludwig van Beethoven took years to write the definitive version of his only work for the stage, not only changing the title (initially it was called Leonora) but also producing several versions of the libretto. Lang has written his own libretto for this version of the narrative without using a single note of Beethoven’s music.

In the original opera, Leonora’s love is enough to free her loved one, unjustly imprisoned for political reasons. In Prisoner of the State Lang questions the romantic idealism of this in the face of 21st century political mores. Elkhanah Pulitzer’s economic but compelling staging places evil and incarceration center-stage: the large chorus of prisoners—present throughout the performance—is the dominant visual and musical focus. The Governor (Lang’s Pizarro) suggests in an aria it is “better to be feared, than loved.” Lang’s prisoner, just like Beethoven’s, discovered in a claustrophobic underground cell, experiences joy at being reunited with his “Leonora.” But in Pulitzer’s staging, we are in no doubt that Lang’s Fidelio takes place in a less forgiving, more familiar world than Beethoven’s.

The Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC), with the prisoners chorus and the four soloists, plays the leading role in a production already celebrated as a compelling and timely reframing of the original.

Event will be held in English.

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