A faithful Fidelio

{TABLE} Fidelio (in English) ............. Beethoven {/TABLE} JUST over two years ago DGOS Opera Ireland offered a Fidelio that burdened itself with unnecessary baggage in a search for contemporary resonance. The action was set in a modern hotel, in a country (unidentified) under siege, and the production boasted such absurdities as a chorus of prisoners with hardly a crease in their clothing.

Opera Northern Ireland's new Fidelio, sung in a specially commissioned English translation by Jonathan Burton, is an altogether more straightforward affair. Designer Isabella Bywater's sets create a prison like prison, with sun baked walls, her costumes (designed in partnership with Robert Worley) are matchingly unfussy, the direction by Matthew Francis generally effective in an unobtrusive way.

The cast has strengths and weaknesses. Kate Ladner makes a bright, attractive, agile Marzelline, Philip Sheffield an ineffectual Jaquino, understandably spurned as the object of her affections. Alan Ewing's Rocco is altogether too light of voice, immature of demeanour and young in appearance, and Keith Latham's over the top Pizarro, forced in delivery and ugly of sound, is plausible only as a caricature of evil. At the other end of the scale, Philip O'Reilly paints a noble, slightly aloof picture of the liberating Fernando.

The pinched vocalising of John Horton Murray's incarcerated Florestan generates little sympathy. But, no matter, such is the humanity and compassion of Suzanne Murphy as his long suffering wife, Leonore. Ms Murphy's is an unevens Leonore, not always vocally at her finest in the arias (where the conductor Stephen Barlow at times almost seems set on an opposing course), but often searchingly illuminating and extraordinarily touching.

It is her communication of unswerving compassion, faith and fidelity which draw one so consistently into the concerns of Beethoven's masterly, if flawed, creation. Not for nothing is her character in disguise - and the opera itself - named Fidelio.

In spite of the pressured conducting of Stephen Barlow (bringing some rough edges to the playing of the Ulster Orchestra) and the risible postures and ragged singing of the male chorus, it is the achievement of this production that Beethoven's deeply felt humanitarian concerns do succeed in communicating vividly.