This Fidelio was among the high-profile offerings at the 2015 Salzburg Festival. Jonas Kaufmann led the cast with the excellent Adrianne Pieczonka as Leonore; one of the most interesting and serious directors of his generation, Claus Guth, was in charge of the production – what could go wrong? Quite a lot, in fact.

The main points in brief: Guth does away with all the dialogue, replacing it with portentous recordings of heavy breathing and nervous mutterings; the same set of vast panelled walls and oversized parquet floor serves for both acts, offering a sort of wonky mouse-eye view of a smart, possibly Viennese apartment; Florestan is imprisoned beneath an ominous black square, which might or might not be exerting itself metaphysically as well as physically over proceedings; Don Pizarro and his minions sport rent-a-baddie dark glasses, overcoats and waxed-back black hair.

The behavioural default is jittery nervousness, with Kaufmann’s Florestan lurching about desperately in the final scene before collapsing. To top it all off, Leonore has a ‘shadow’ who looks on anxiously, adding sign language (I think) interjections which reach an apotheosis as she strides to the front of the stage in the final minutes to gesticulate furiously – although the camera direction is unsure where really to look at this point.

On one level you have to admire Guth’s conviction: he sticks doggedly to his slightly loopy, psychologico-existentialist premise and stages it with his customary skill; the shadow effects that clearly play an important role are, in particular, brilliantly achieved. But none of it seems to have much to do with Fidelio – music or drama – and Sony’s presentation offers no help: the booklet has just a bare synopsis but no word at all about Guth’s far from self-explanatory Konzept.

There aren’t really many musical compensations, either. Kaufmann performs with his usual professionalism and commitment, and sings intelligently, but the voice doesn’t come across as being in the best condition – certainly not a patch on his recording with Abbado (DG, 9/11), or his early Florestan from Zurich, in Jürgen Flimm’s workmanlike staging, recently repackaged and made available by ArtHaus on Blu-ray as well as DVD (6/05). Pieczonka is similarly committed, and brings her lovely, gleaming and open-throated soprano to a role that nevertheless does stretch her at its extremes. Hans-Peter König is a decent Rocco, Tomasz Konieczny a woolly, somewhat shouty Don Pizarro.

Franz Welser-Möst’s conducting is brusquely efficient, while the Vienna Philharmonic hardly excel themselves (there’s some consistently sour oboe playing). And rarely, I suspect, can the insertion of Leonore No 3in Act 2 have felt more unjustified.