Shoes

' [...] The set is a raked stage at stark angles in what is made to look like a platform of compressed shoes. In fact, shoes come into play several more times in the show, whether dropped from the ceiling or shoveled from a grave. The empty shoes appear to symbolize the victims "disappeared" by this corrupt government, recalling both the empty shoe protests of France and the USA, and the mounds of empty shoes discovered at the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.'

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Brent Reilly Turner as Florestan,
Aviva Fortunata as Leonore/Fidelio,
Peter McGillivray as Don Pizarro,
Valerian Ruminski as Rocco,
projections bij Mónica Hernandez

P

Fidelio as a mirror of human rights

'Pacific Opera Victoria's season opener is Beethoven's Fidelio [...] In this modernized version, the action takes place in a setting vaguely reminiscent of a South American dictatorship of the 1960/70s, with the heroine Leonore joining a resistance faction in an attempt to free her husband, a political prisoner being held without trial.'

corruption of power

'In fact, this whole production makes reference to human rights abuses across the world; projected background images include those of Colombian mothers protesting the army-sponsored murder of their sons, to Goya's painting "The Third of May", a depiction of the execution of unarmed soldiers (sic: unarmed resistance fighters). This production misses no opportunity to shine a light on the corruption of power, and the resultant loss of human rights.'

Melissa Ratcliff
on schmopera.com
October 15, 2018
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