This week I am listening intensely to Beethovens Fidelio, conducted by
Bernstein, sung by Janowitz, Kollo, Jungwirth et al.

Studying the libretto I have come along some (hopefully) interesting
thoughts I would like to share with you and know your opinion of.

There are three people in the play who repeatedly refer to the term
Pflicht (duty):  Rocco the jailor, Leonore and Florestan.  By far the most
interesting of these three is - surprisingly? - Rocco to me.  Leonores
concept of duty is the duty of maternal love which she follows to rescue
her husband Florestan.  Florestans concept of duty is the duty of telling
the truth even in a dictatorial regime that punishes people who openly
speak their minds.  But what about Rocco?

The more I think about the opera (and listen to it) the more ghastly this
figure becomes to me.  I once was a volunteer for Amnesty International and
learned that there are - roughly and not scientifically speaking - three
types of torturers and jailors:  the first type enjoys the bloody work (the
Pizarros), the second type considers it duty (and maybe enjoys it without
knowing), the third type considers it work like every other work (and goes
home to wife and children in the evening).

Rocco works for a dictatorial regime.  He doesnt enjoy his work but he
doesnt know that for a long time.  It is Leonores example that makes him
aware of his capability for pity.  Up to this point he just fulfills his
duty.  Of course he refuses to kill Florestan when Pizarro wants him to
do it:  "To kill is not my duty".  But all the time he helps starving
Florestan to death which obviously is not killing in Roccos eyes but
fulfilling ones duty.  Isnt that horrible? Rocco sees at the end that
his concept of duty was not the right one, that he served a tyrant and
murderer.  But up to this point he is just a Bonsai-Eichmann who, without
a word of protest, fulfills his duty:  which means starving a man slowly
to death, helping to kill him.

In this character I can see something in this opera hidden between
Biedermeier operetta and high drama of Freedom and Humanity, something
surely not intended but maybe unavoidable now to see after this century
of camps:  It is a man thoughtlessly doing his "duty", in the Gulag, in
the stadium of Santiago de Chile, in Auschwitz.  This man (and woman!)
frightens me more than all openly brutal characters, all Stalins, Pinochets
and Hitlers possibly can.

Robert Peters
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