‘Triumph! Triumph! Triumph!’ as nasty Pizarro exultantly cries. He, of course, is in for a disappointment. Not so the listener and viewer of this performance, which is caught in fine sound and skilfully filmed. Pizarro will, for instance, have no place in the great festival of light that is the finale. Here the rejoicing is so powerful that we close down the video, turn off the television and go to bed with the surge and sequence of inspired creation fully in possession, convinced that in the whole of opera there is nothing to match it. That is the sign of a great Fidelio, and it means that, throughout, the proportions, structure and balance of the work have been rendered with clarity and conviction. That in turn means that the opening scene – the Marzelline-Jaquino duet and the solos which might seem to be from some other opera – has been integrated, so that the work is a journey from light into the blackest tunnel and out again into an infinitely greater light.
A prime contribution to the success of this process in the present performance is made by the portrayal of Rocco, the gaoler. Instead of the bumbling, coarse-grained character of convention, Robert Lloyd presents a full human being, a man with a rueful-realistic twinkle, and above all a loving father. This of itself guards against the alien introduction of comic opera, and helps to fashion the role so that even here our concern is with real humanity. Also, Rocco’s scenes with Leonore and Pizarro carry a conviction in which Lloyd’s warmth and natural dignity make a notable difference. Pizarro is here a fine, handsome presence whose inward ugliness is potently evident in the ruthlessness of expression. Florestan, by contrast, is a fat man of no romantic presence, whose goodness and nobility match his suffering.
Leonore is the radiant Benaekova, and she presents a problem. The camera reveals unsparingly a disguise which just possibly might pass in the theatre. It says much for her singing, and for something in the spirit of her performance, that the willing suspension of disbelief can prevail as well as it does. In all other respects (except perhaps in the pointless speculation as to why the date of these events should have been advanced by about a century) the visual element satisfies well; and musically, under Dohnanyi’s authoritative direction, this is a memorable and moving Fidelio – and in a lifetime of opera-going the experience is not common.'