If we keep in mind, though, that Leonore doesn’t necessarily call for a Heldensopran, there’s much to enjoy in Davidsen’s singing of it, and some flashes of excitement, as well. In the traded-off passage in thirds with Marzelline in the Act 1 trio, the voice takes on an easy shine. Though of course we miss real bite in the “Abscheulicher!” recitative, her effort to sing into it confirms that there is more there than she allowed herself in her Eva. Her attempt to pull back on the upper G at “ein Far-ben-bo-gen” thins out, but once she has gotten onto the ascending line and slow, chromatically weaving divisions of “Komm, Hoffnung” she is in friendly territory, and there’s a gentle womanliness in the timbre. In the allegro section, she handles the many intervallic jumps in good order, and at least does not allow the low C-sharps and B-sharps to throw her off track. In both sections, she’s able to release into exhilarating high Bs. She sings well in the duo with Rocco at the end of Act 1, and rises to the confrontation in the dungeon scene with real mettle. At spots throughout the role, she gathers the voice toward more of a core, and toward the darker side of the spectrum, than I had previously heard from her.

Certainly the role has called forth these responses from Davidsen. But I think her conductor has had a positive influence, too. That is the experienced and authoritative Marek Janowski, who also led Pentatone’s Der Freischütz with Davidsen as Agathe, though with a different orchestra and chorus (see From More Lotte Lehmann to Lise Davidsen and “Der Freischütz,”  3/13/20). His taut, controlled, and rhythmically incisive reading, with a splendid-sounding Dresdner Philharmonie, seems to have all his soloists on high alert. Two of them are colleagues of Davidsen’s from our Meistersinger—Zeppenfeld (Rocco) and Kränzle (Pizarro). Their voices naturally have greater presence as recorded, and Kränzle, in particular, is tackling a role of far different coloration. He does so with directness and relish, and while we’re still aware that the voice has little room in it, he keeps it compact and firm, and brings it off to better effect than his Beckmesser would have presaged. Zeppenfeld, notwithstanding his atypical timbre and weight for the part, sings through Rocco easily and quite beautifully. The Gold Aria doesn’t have much character (it sounds genial in an avuncular way), but he gets a little more point into his scenes with Davidsen. He’s a good singer carrying the maxim “trust the music” too far, I’d say.

The Florestan of this Fidelio is a tenor new to me, Christian Elsner. There is no more of the heroic in his voice than in Vogt’s—he sounds like an expressively sympathetic, vocally middling Belmonte—but he has rather better control of it, shaping the line of “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen” nicely, surmounting its climax without calamity, and facing up to the dramatic moments with verbal and rhythmic accent, if not tonal metal. The Marzelline and Jacquino (Christina Landshammer and Cornel Frey, respectively) have typical voices for their roles and sing them well enough, though she (with far the greater assignment) is not able to begin the Canon Quartet with ideal precision and firmness. Just as in the Pentatone Freischütz, the final scene brings governmental justice with the one voice that sounds both appropriate to its brief role and entirely in command of it—the high baritone Marcus Eiche as Ottokar there, the true bass Günther Groissböck as Don Fernando here. Indeed, Groissböck and Zeppenfeld might well have traded roles to good use, with Groissböck a darker, weightier Rocco and Zeppenfeld an aristocratic, benign Fernando. The choral contributions are superb, and though the recording had to be made under “social distancing” conditions, the only place this appears to have had much influence is in the celebrative finale, where it actually aids the broadening-out of the sound. The sonics of the recording are in general more sensible than the recent norm; I only wish that what little is left of the dialogue had not been dropped to Inner Sanctum levels. Theatrephobia seems to prevail.