Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s powerful sign-language Fidelio — review

This was the first time the Los Angeles Philharmonic has toured to the UK since music director Gustavo Dudamel announced he would be leaving at the end of 2025/6 season. The Dudamel years have brought the orchestra high profile, a popular touch and more than a dash of glitz. He will be a difficult act to follow.

Their 10-day tour to Europe, ending in London, was planned with an Olympic ring to it. Paris was on the itinerary immediately before these two concerts and the first of the tour programmes guaranteed a Star Wars-style lift-off thanks to the Olympic Fanfare and Theme by John Williams, written for LA’s own Olympic year in 1984.

That was a reminder that one of Dudamel’s strengths has been his ability to forge relationships that play to a wide audience. Hollywood composer Williams has been one of them (he provided the encore, too, the March from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Latin American composers, drawing on Dudamel’s Venezuelan roots, are another.

The centrepiece of this first concert was Altar de cuerda (“String Altar”), an LA Phil commission by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. This is a violin concerto with a highly energetic solo part, which was played with unstinting vitality by Maria Dueňas. Its ideas are thin, but the outer movements sizzle with Latin American rhythms and the slow movement conjures a landscape with a touch of magic (who would have expected that 10 players running their fingers round the rims of wine glasses could make such a powerfully eerie noise?).

To end, Dudamel let rip in a powerhouse performance of Dvořák’s Symphony No 9, “From the New World”. Nothing was held back, certainly not the brass or decibels or extremes of speed — a rabble-rouser, but hardly loveable.

★★★☆☆

Nothing could have been further from that than the second concert, a semi-staged performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio. This project was conceived in Los Angeles as a collaboration with Deaf West Theatre, in which the dialogue in the opera would be performed in sign language.

By 1805, when Beethoven produced the first version of Fidelio, he already knew that he was becoming profoundly deaf. Although we cannot be sure how much he could hear at this time, deafness must already have been influencing the way he responded to his art.

In purely practical terms, the hybrid nature of the LA Phil’s performance had its problems. The costumes were horrendous and the duplication of every role by actor and singer led to a crowded and confused staging — and yet in the most general terms there was a sense that another dimension had opened up, giving a deeper appreciation of Beethoven’s embrace of humanity in the opera.

The cast of singers was acceptable, headed by Andrew Staples as a Florestan in command of his treacherous aria, Tamara Wilson as Leonore, James Rutherford as Rocco and Gabriella Reyes a lovely Marzelline, singing with a warm, lyric voice. The actors from Deaf West Theatre brought heightened drama and some humour to their roles. With money apparently being no object, the three fine choirs came from Spain and Venezuela.

Unlikely as it may seem, Dudamel’s sober and darkly coloured Beethoven showed off what his orchestra can do better than their overblown Dvořák the night before. It was good to hear the LA Phil in two such different guises.

★★★★☆

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