Assuredly, the vogue for setting classics in modern-day dress and settings will soon run its dismal course. This Met production, dating from October 2000, may not be as disastrously wrong-headed as the Glyndebourne staging of a year or so later, but it is nearly as destructive of Beethoven’s vision. Martin Bernheimer, Opera magazine’s seasoned New York critic, exactly delineated its shortcomings: ‘It plays loose with both the letter and, worse, the spirit of Beethoven’s law. It strips the melodrama of its optimistic gestures, its heroic contrivances and unabashed plea for romantic pathos.’

Instead we have a kind of 1930s’ B-movie setting and action, a sordid, unheroic story set in a modern cell-block where ‘Colonel’ Pizarro rules, machine-guns at the ready, until brought to book by the ‘President’s’ emissary. With the source of the plot trivialised and the dialogue unpardonably altered for the worse (in any case, why should these Americans be singing and talking in German?), we are left with some clumsy, old-hat symbolism and a bit of psychosexual-babble. Will these modern directors never learn to trust the authors’ intention?

Rocco becomes a puzzled, almost comic clerk, Fidelio/Leonore, as Bernheimer puts it, looks like ‘a befuddled petrol-station attendant’ and Pizarro is a small-time bent policeman. Rocco serves champagne during the Gold aria, then he, Fidelio/Leonore and Marzelline have a feast during the soldiers’ march. As usual, because it is hard to damage, Act 2 scene 1 emerges almost unscathed. Mattila, as Leonore, who has earlier looked distinctly uncomfortable doing such things as bringing out a pistol and Florestan’s photo during ‘Abscheulicher!’, begins to give the noble and moving portrayal of Leonore that is obviously in her. She sings throughout with her customary commitment and attention to the stylistic verities, even when her tone is not quite warm enough for the role. She is helped by pre-slimming Ben Heppner’s sincere, strongly sung Florestan, one of his most convincing parts.

Although René Pape is hampered by the silly reading of Rocco imposed on him, he sings with his customarily formidable tone and care for the text. Falk Struckmann is an imposing presence, but his voice is as gritty as ever. The (presumably) American Marzelline and Jaquino, neither very sympathetically conceived nor singing in very idiomatic German, do what they can in the circumstances. Robert Lloyd is as dignified a Fernando as he is permitted to be. James Levine conducts a crisp account of the score, but not a particularly grand or spiritual one.

Brian Large has his cameras promptly in the right places, but why is the format not widescreen? Applause is a bit intrusive. The booklet has an essay by Mike Ashman attempting to justify what director Jürgen Flimm is doing, but it gives us no information about the cast.