Last night the Canadian Opera Company had their opening night of Fidelio in a recent San Francisco Opera production directed by Matthew Ozawa, with set and projections designed by Alexander Nichols and costumes by Jessica Jahn. Their design concept is the real star of the evening. While the COC Orchestra led by Johannes Debus, the chorus and soloists all sound great, it’s the look and feel that matters.

While I revel in the happy endings in Beethoven’s music, loving Bruno Weil and Tafelmusik’s recent gallop through the 5th symphony, in 2023 romanticism has become problematic, as we saw onstage last night. In the light of day before the cameras, in this age of media spin and fake news, can we trust the politicians, can we believe that rescue operas are still possible? The dreams of liberation in the 19th century are far removed from the disillusionment of recent times. While there was another rush of hope when the Wall Came down separating Eastern and Western Europe with the fall of the USSR, recent events in Europe darken the horizon. Although I was confident at intermission that Leonore would still rescue her Florestan, it’s against a scary backdrop of regimes and leaders who don’t honour the rules.

Having seen some pictures beforehand, I came to the show wondering if the piece would still work, an opera that begins with an innocent tone as Marzelline (Anna-Sophie Neher) rebuffes the advances of her beau Jaquino (Josh Lovell)….

Marzelline is now fascinated by the new guard Fidelio (Miina-Liisa Värelä). In fact it seems to work better than I can ever recall, the awkward shift in tone from pastoral romance to suspenseful rescue opera much easier when played against a backdrop playing up the ironies of our modern lives. Trump might feel totally at home among all the bankers boxes strewn everywhere, although I doubt he’d ever get this close to a prison and the human casualties we see before us. The design concept might be “the banality of evil”, suggesting the ease with which one surrenders to authority, especially in an industrial prison space. Rocco (Dimitry Ivashchenko) is Marzelline’s lovable dad.

Rocco just happens to be middle management in a prison, supervising guards and burying bodies for the evil plotting of Don Pizarro (Johannes Martin Kränzle). The concept enacts the familiar slippery slope of morality, making the opera seem fresh and contemporary. Even knowing Beethoven’s ending I found myself wondering whether Pizarro would really be taken down or not.

Fidelio is of course Florestan’s wife Leonore in a disguise, to infiltrate the prison. Her modern costuming is far more believable than usual, as she looks like just another one of the guards.

I found Kränzle’s Pizarro to be the most interesting portrayal, right on the boundary between the romantic era and our post-truth world. Alas he gets booed when he comes out, playing the villain of the piece to perfection. But although he’s performing a nearly unmusical role, belting out the most believable and lyrical “Ha! Welch ein Augenblick” I have ever heard, making music out of something that is usually barked or shouted, instead of the usual ugly melodramatic villainy he gave something recognizably political, slippery and as contemporary as what you see on CP24 every day.

Although the COC chorus did their usual splendid work, I must say that the one thing that didn’t quite fly for me as usual was the emergence of the chorus from prison, a moment that usually brings me to tears. Perhaps that’s because of the design concept that strips away the usual romantic sublimity. I was instead perplexed while listening to nice music from Debus and the orchestra & chorus that left me cold, possibly a deliberate goal of Ozawa et al, deconstructing the usual. It’s now merely sad rather than uplifting.

After intermission of course, everything shifts. The design concept works brilliantly as we meet Florestan (Clay Hilley) in one of the great solos of all opera, and he doesn’t disappoint, aided by Nichols’s stunning projections.

However it’s sung these are the most beautiful, most powerfully moving images I’ve seen on a COC stage in a long time.

Värelä, Hilley, Ivashchenko and Kränzle serve up gripping drama taking us to the conclusion and the fascinating moment when Don Ferrando (Sava Vemic) arrives at the prison.

I’ll see it again, you should too. Fidelio has six more performances at the Four Seasons Centre until October 20th . Don’t miss it.