The quartet in Act 1 is one of the joys of the opera. A father, his daughter, the young man he hopes will marry his daughter, the other young man who wishes to marry the daughter - each sings about the hopes for the future. The quartet is intimate. Everyone in the audience empathises.
And yet how incongruous it is, the private expressions being voiced in a jail where the daily work of three of the four is that of jailer and of the fourth to get on with the ironing and the other domestic chores. There are at home in the jail. And the challenge to the designer is to present this homeliness within the jail.
Rocco has a job and gets on with it. He has a daughter whom he loves and for whom he has found a husband, a young man who may make his way in the prison service. Marzelline is dutiful, knows her own mind, and has come to love the young stranger (about whom they know nothing). Jacquino, he too has a steady job. And he seeks a wife to complete his life.
Once we leave the domestic scene, we do not return to it. We are taken from the domestic to the public, to the unjust imprisonment of political prisoners, to the unjust treatment of one special prisoner, and to the personification of oppression. Rocco, for all that he releases the prisoners for a brief time in the light, is a willing collaborator. Fidelio opposes. The events in the darkest of the dungeons, followed by the finale, send us out to the street with the triumph of the light over darkness. The opera could have been called Resurrection.
And the quartet? They will work out their own domestic concerns in their own way.
Don
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