Böhm conducts Beethoven: Fidelio

Chained in a dungeon, an innocent man awaits certain death. But someone has remembered his plight – and perhaps the new prison-warder Fidelio holds the key to his fate. Beethoven said that his only opera Fidelio meant more to him than anything he ever wrote, and this soul-stirring drama has rarely been given with more authority than in this 1969 performance from what was then West Berlin conducted by Karl Böhm, a titan among postwar German conductors. Gwyneth Jones – then at the height of her youthful powers - takes the title role, and Gustav Rudolf Sellner’s classic staging, here transferred to film, has lost none of its sombre majesty.

Soloists: 

James King (Tenor), Gwyneth Jones (Soprano), Martti Talvela (Bass), Gustav Neidlinger (Bass), Josef Greindl (Bass), Olivera Miljakovic (Mezzo-Soprano), Donald Grobe (Tenor), Manfred Röhrl (Bass), Barry McDaniel (Baritone)

Ensembles: 

Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin, Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin

Conductor: 

Karl Böhm