Last year I read Jan Swafford's magnificent biography of Ludwig van Beethoven (first photo is from the book's dust cover), well I read most of it: the author is a composer and provides detailed analyses of Beethoven's works and these, I have to admit, I skipped, being a non-musician who has never learnt to read a note of music. However, the rest of this huge volume (936 pages without appendix and notes) paints a vivid picture of Beethoven the man and he comes across as far from the impossible, curmudgeonly introvert we commonly imagine him to be. He was a man who suffered immense problems with his health, not just the deafness which is well-known but many other ailments (some allegedly because of drinking too much cheap wine!). He was clearly not at all an easy person to deal with but was actually a social being, though one had a troubled upbringing, who didn't find a partner in life, suffered unrequited love, and also had to endure difficult family, personal and commercial relationships. The miracle is that despite these burdens, which would have surely flattened anyone less gifted and driven, he produced so much incredible music.
After reading the book, I invested in a few CD's of Beethoven works I hadn't listened to before, plus the DVD (see picture below) of Leonard Bernstein, the Vienna State Opera and a cast of famous singers performing Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera. I had not watched Fidelio in performance before and I found it was different from most of the operas I have watched. How so? Well, the plot revolves around a female character, not so unusual, but in this case, Leonore, who Beethoven wanted to name the opera after, is no suffering damsel in distress, but a powerful figure, a fighter for freedom who will do anything to liberate her husband from the dungeon of the corrupt tyrant Don Pizarro. Liberation from tyranny is the theme of the opera and when I saw the prisoners celebrating their freedom at the end of the opera, my mind went immediately to the countries of Eastern Europe, freed from Soviet domination in the late 1980s. I once had the privilege of meeting a diplomat who had been at the Czech Embassy in London at the time of the Prague Spring in 1968. After the Soviets had crushed the Czech reform movement, he was recalled, stripped of his status and sent to work in a garage, mending Skodas. When the 'velvet revolution' happened in 1989, he was offered his old job again, and straightaway drove a Skoda right across Europe back to London, that it what I call a triumph of liberty!
We live in a world where individual liberty is in peril in a great many parts of the world: The Economist sometimes publishes a useful chart showing relative freedom in countries across the globe and it is not happy reading. Beethoven believed in individual liberty and was appalled when Napoleon crowned himself emperor and became a dictator, snuffing out the flame of liberty which the French revolution had initially seemed to ignite. I am sure his music is still played all around the world in countries with a wide variety of regimes, but do they realize the message it is carrying? Let's hope Beethoven's music, and his message in Fidelio, remains with us forever.
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