If your instinct is to undermine Beethoven, you’re directing the wrong opera: Fidelio reviewed

‘People may say I can’t sing,’ said the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, ‘but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.’ There were groans of dismay as an official walked out before the start of the Royal Opera’s new Fidelio: Jonas Kaufmann was not feeling on top form, but he was going to perform the role of Florestan regardless, and begged our indulgence. The mind plays tricks and after an announcement like that it’s hard to be entirely sure whether you’re hearing a skilfully proportioned interpretation or a singer dialling it down. But let the record show that Kaufmann did sing, and if you’ve booked for this production on the strength of that magic name alone, you can breathe easy.

And indisposed or not, there’s no mistaking that endless, unfurling stream of black-and-gold tenor tone. The stupendous crescendo on Kaufmann’s very first word — ‘Gott!’ — might have been the single most gripping sound in the whole show. Which is saying something when a cast includes Lise Davidsen as Leonore: a singer whose top notes are like staring directly at the sun, and whose unforced personal magnetism makes the role’s cross-dressing disguise wholly convincing. You could see why Marzelline (Amanda Forsythe) might have a crush on this strapping, compassionate young man, and Forsythe’s bright, brave performance was the centre of a well-characterised ensemble. Georg Zeppenfeld was a believably troubled Rocco, and Simon Neal’s clenched, black-browed Pizarro sang in cross-hatched shades of grey.

Antonio Pappano conducted attractively enough, and throughout Act One we might have been looking at a decent, if sluggish, revival of a 40-year-old historic staging. Director Tobias Kratzer sets Act One in revolutionary France, with naturalistic designs and a walk-on part for a horse. It looks good, and it works well: when Pizarro quietly invokes the Law of Suspects (Kratzer has adapted the spoken dialogue to suit his concept), the sense of enveloping, oppressive evil that it generates more than offsets the mounting number of inconsistencies — mostly caused by Kratzer’s attempts to rewrite the role of Marzelline in line with 21st-century standards of feistiness (she’s unbuttoning Fidelio’s breeches in no time).