Fidelity to 'Fidelio': The Convention of Unwritten Appoggiaturas in Beethoven's Only Opera

Abstract

Beethoven’s Fidelio remains a hybrid work—the composer’s sole opera (refined through at least three versions) and a fusion of genres, which in turn engendered the subsequent development of German Opera. A new critical edition of Fidelio published by Bärenreiter contains editorial suggestions for the incorporation of 132 unwritten appoggiaturas in performance, aligning the work stylistically with the conventions of eighteenth-century vocal practice. These editorial suggestions are at variance with twentieth-century studio and live recordings of the opera, which indicate that in Fidelio this practice has been confined to a few isolated musical numbers in no more than a dozen contexts or ‘hotspots’. In an attempt to account for this divergence, the criteria of the new edition have been examined and evidence has been presented from early arrangements (dating from c.1815), Beethoven’s own oeuvre, recordings, and printed editions of Fidelio in order to make comparison with twentieth-century performance practice. The picture that emerges is ambiguous and often fragmentary. The parameters of a critical edition of an opera are considered and two views of achieving fidelity to Fidelio are discerned: one informed by the conventions of nineteenth-century operatic performance practice, the other—more idealized and abstract—plumbing the depths of Beethoven’s creative imagination.