Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio, with its unique amalgam of Singspieler-ish domesticity, last-minute rescue-opera melodrama, married love exaltation, just-deserts redemption, and spiritual uplift, returned to the Met’s repertory on March 4 for a brief run, in the production first directed in 2000 by Jürgen Flimm. It was conducted by Susanna Mälkki, and the revival stage director was Gina Lapinski.

Lise Davidsen is the raison d’être of this revival, so first attention to her. I have already written often about this soprano^(I), very much the Met’s leading lady of the decade. So the question here is how comfortably the artistic proclivities already characterized consort with the hyperextended vocal, musical, and dramatic requirements and opportunities (plenty of both) in the role of Leonore. Let me run a quick inventory, with the understanding that the three aspects can be teased apart only for discussion purposes. Vocal: on the positive side, there is the upper octave, and in particular, the upper fifth (E to B) of her instrument, whose amplitude, freedom, and clearwater timbre enable a satisfying, often exciting, fulfillment of the part’s crucial climactic phrases and proclamations—worth the price of admission in itself for all of us who look for these crowning moments. Also, clean intonation, by no means to be taken for granted. One reason, however, that those upper notes register their sometimes startling impact is that we are not prepared for them by the sound of her lower octave, which, though not jumbled and unpredictable like, for instance, Leonie Rysanek’s (another sensational-at-the-top Leonore), is a slender, modest presence; it can trace a line, but not fill it in. Her available span of color (the chiaroscuro) is controlled, but narrow. This means that not only does the great interplay of registers, resonances, and dynamics set up by Beethoven across wide stretches of compass in the “Abscheulicher!” become little games of now-she’s-here, now-she’s-gone, but that the many moments of lower-midrange settlement, some of extraordinary beauty, are not more than indicated. The overall vocal impression is of a “best highlights” Leonore, with much of the rest more or less in neutral.^(II)