Florence

FLORENCE None of the three operas staged during this year's Maggio Musicale boasted an ideal cast, but the inaugural production, Beethoven's Fidelio (seen at the Teatro Comunale on May 21), proved memorable nonetheless, thanks to conductor Paavo Jarvi's ability to invest every bar of the opera with an extraordinary degree of moral tension (a rare quality even among the greatest conductors today), and to the unusual emotional scope and sensitivity of Robert Carsen's production. There was nothing original about his idea of setting the opera in a concentration camp (the single bare set was desig...