Sunday, May 12, 2013

Fidelio Password

It is pointed out by Frederic Raphael in his Introduction to Dream story that the password Denmark logically suggested the orgy scene was a dream, per:

"With its realistic detail, Fridolin’s adventure seems to belong to the waking world, but does it? The reader must decide, though the use of ‘Denmark’ (as the password when Fridolin is seeking entry to the mysterious house where beautiful women are to be found) echoes, surely deliberately, the fact that Albertine’s dream lover is a Dane. Perhaps there was such an oneiric quality to life in Vienna that, as Schnitzler’s leading character says in Paracelsus, …

only those who look for a meaning will find it. Dreaming and waking, truth and lie mingle. Security exists nowhere. We know nothing of others, nothing of ourselves. We always play. Wise is the man who knows."

Schnitzler, Arthur (1999-07-01). Dream Story (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) (Kindle Locations 271-276). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

In the movie instead of Cape Cod [for example] Kubrick uses the word Fidelio, and my take on that choice is detailed hereunder.

Fidelio is Beethoven's only Opera and we know Kubrick was somewhat of a Beethoven lover.  Maybe I personally have an advantage here because as a fellow Beethoven lover, in 1976 I saw Overture Leanora #3 performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London and on watching this movie one immediately sees the architecture [as well as the ceremony] inside Somerton as being a re-enactment of such an Opera as Fidelio.

Take a look at how well the magnificent Leonora Overture fits into the same scenario of a mysterious woman rescuing our hero from the "political nasties", two centuries removed  from 1800 for Beethoven with the French in Vienna, 1900 for Schnitzler and the Jewish problem in Vienna to 2000 [almost] for Kubrick in New York and the problem Kubrick seems to have been prevented from exposing.


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