Calixto Bieito's Fidelio is one of those stagings whose reputation goes before it. The changes that the director had made to both the text and to Beethoven's score were widely discussed when the production was first seen in Munich three years ago, and Bieito has explained the reasons behind them in interviews leading up to its revival in London, where it launched the new season at English National Opera.
Many at the first night, then, probably knew already much of what they were going to hear. That musically the opera would begin with the third and longest of Beethoven's Leonore overtures rather than the overture that Beethoven finally composed for his only opera; that the two scenes of the second act would be separated by part of the sublime slow movement from the A minor String Quartet Op 132, played by a quartet in cages descending slowly from the flies, and that most of the original dialogue had been replaced by quotations from Jorge Luis Borges and Cormac McCarthy. What they may not have expected is the sheer panache and intensity of the music theatre that Bieito and his team have created around this always problematic work.
Most previous Bieito shows that I have seen begin by substituting one kind of naturalism for another, replacing the original narrative setting with one of his own devising, often taken from contemporary Spain. But Fidelio doesn't do that. Rebecca Ringst's strikingly beautiful design is a shifting geometry of metal, glass and fluorescent lights, which traps everyone within it, and tilts forward in the second act to create the maze of tunnels leading to the cell in which Stuart Skelton's Florestan is rotting away; the setting is contemporary but otherwise unspecific. On it the production can then deal in symbols; some of them are obvious – like the portrayal of the minister Don Fernando as an 18th-century fop, a parody of an enlightenment archetype – others more obscure, but all the characters it seems, are trapped in one kind of prison or another, not just the literal one that incarcerates Florestan and his fellow inmates.
Some things of course, remain inexplicable, and some elements of the plot – the insipid relationship between Sarah Tynan's Marzelline and Adrian Dwyer's Jaquino, most obviously - are not explored in any real detail. It's challenging and fascinating at the same time. Emma Bell's Leonore is certainly a fully fleshed-out character; from the moment we see her binding her breasts to become the boy Fidelio during the overture, to her genuinely truthful, almost awkward reconciliation with her husband Florestan in the final scene, she is the engine, the moral force that drives the opera's creaky dramaturgy, come what may.
Musically it's often superb. Conductor Edward Gardner sets the standard with a thrilling account of the Leonora No 3 Overture to begin, and paces the rest of the evening quite expertly. Skelton and Bell are a well matched couple vocally, even if Skelton's acting is not always as instinctive as it might be. Philip Horst's Pizarro is disappointingly blowsy, James Creswell's Rocco is both musical and characterful. This may be a production of Fidelio that glosses the original rather than presenting it as truthfully as some may want it, but what it offers instead, both visually and musically, is very well worth experiencing.
* In rep until 17 October. Box office: 020-7845 9300.
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