All products and recordings are chosen independently by our editorial team. This review contains affiliate links and we may receive a commission for purchases made. Please read our affiliates FAQ page to find out more.

Gaveaux: Léonore

Kimy McLaren, Pascale Beaudin, Jean-Michel Richer, Keven Geddes et al; Opera Lafayette/Ryan Brown; dir. Oriol Tomas (Naxos, DVD)

Our rating 
3.0 out of 5 star rating 3.0
DVD_2110591_Gaveaux_cmyk

Gaveaux Léonore
Kimy McLaren, Pascale Beaudin, Jean-Michel Richer, Keven Geddes, Dominique Côté, Tomislav Lavoie & Alexandree Sylvestre; Opera Lafayette/Ryan Brown; dir. Oriol Tomas (New York, 2017)
Naxos DVD: 2.110591; Blu-ray: NBD0085V   82 mins

Advertisement MPU reviews

If Léonore was simply where Fidelio began then it would be only a footnote in operatic history, for Pierre Gaveaux (1761-1825) is no Beethoven. But how two very different composers respond to the same libretto is both fascinating and instructive. Beethoven treated Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s text as the triumph of goodness, darkness banished by a wife’s love for her husband. For Gaveaux, who created the role of Florestan in his Léonore, it was a slice of recent history, an opéra comique with spoken dialogue first performed in 1798, less than a decade after the mass executions of the Revolutionary Terror. His work adds to our understanding of what was happening to French music in this period, exhibiting the tension between late-18th-century Classicism and a more radical aesthetic.

Ryan Brown, artistic director of Opera Lafayette, is to be congratulated on both staging and recording Léonore. Resources were clearly stretched with a chorus of prisoners in single figures that overcrowd Laurence Mongeau’s abstract set of swinging doors and gates. Yet in a pit that seems to tumble into the auditorium, Brown coaxes a convincing account of Gaveaux’s score from his orchestra playing on authentic instruments, particularly in the overture and the dark-hued introduction to the second act and Florestan’s dungeon – hushed cellos and violas. The cast of mostly young French Canadians works very much as an ensemble. Tomislav Lavoie is a brisk no-nonsense Roc (Rocco in Beethoven), and Pascale Beaudin turns his daughter into a flirty soubrette. If the tessitura of Florestan’s opening aria isn’t as cruelly high as in Fidelio, Jean-Michel Richer does his best to portray a mind at the end of its tether. But it’s Léonore who really matters and Kimy McLaren is a beguiling heroine who makes the most of her first act aria and then the duet with Florestan. Who wouldn’t hope to be rescued by this Fidelio?

Advertisement MPU reviews

Christopher Cook