FROM AROUND THE WORLD: NEW YORK CITY.(Review)

Fidelio returned to the Met stage on October 11, newly designed by Robert Israel and staged by Jurgen Flimm (house debut), the director of last summer's new Bayreuth Ring cycle. Updating has become a cliche, but Flimm ran that risk to bring the action into recent history. Neither the program nor the drastically cut spoken dialogue offered any explanation, but the scene suggests a small country, perhaps a banana republic. (When Karita Mattila, in the title role, brings provisions during Act I, she eats a banana.) There is a military presence in the prison, with firearms stored and overhauled perilously close to the bars of a triple-tiered row of prison cells; the unseen prisoners are also privy to every confidence exchanged in the courtyard. A metal framework, looking like a factory apparatus or the skeleton of a shed, stands stage left. Flimm keeps his characters active in this setting, sometimes with everyday tasks, sometimes with distracting busywork.

As the characterizations unfolded, Rocco looked more like a civil servant than a hands-on jailer, while Pizarro, first suited as a secret-police plainclothesman, later appeared in khaki. The close-cropped Leonore/Fidelio, convincing in fatigues as a young man, could readily have misled Rocco's daughter, Marzelline, into fancying "him." Uniformed soldiers milled about in the background.

Any qualms felt during Act I were minor compared to those raised by Act II. In the deep basement of the prison, Florestan lay on a heap of discarded clothes in near-total darkness, eased only by the glare of a fluorescent fixture he had at his disposal on the floor. After Rocco and Leonore descended the long metal ladder, toting tools and portable fluorescent tubes, it was discernible that they were trying to dig. But the crux of the whole opera -- Leonore's confrontation with Pizarro, involving by-play with weapons went for naught, simply because one couldn't see. After this, Leonore was so overwhelmed that she collapsed on the opposite side of the stage from Florestan, going to him only midway in their duet. The final scene, problematic in any type of Fidelio production, found the cast lined up in what looked like a curtain call for South Pacific, with Leonore as Ensign Nellie Forbush and Florestan as Emile de Becque. Behind them, where a prison watch tower loomed, there were inconclusive hints of more sinister doings. The regime, in the person of Don Fernando, had thwarted Pizarro and freed the political prisoners, clad in spotless white robes that belied their mistreatment. But with guards still pointing their weapons at the crowd, jubilation seemed premature.

Events onstage can always be adjusted or clarified; meanwhile, Fidelio needs the kind of musical certainty it received under James Levine's firmly outlined leadership. Happily, the conductor chose not to interpolate the Leonore Overture No. 3 midway in Act II, where it undermines the opera as severely as any staging could do. And the cast did its work with assurance.

Mattila, having proved her lyric-dramatic mettle as Elsa in the Met's Lohengrin, measured up to the conviction and flexible vocal steel required of Leonore; mistress of a quietly moving, "Komm, Hoffnung," she also left no doubt that she was a match for the dynamic Pizarro of Falk Struckmann, who treated the villain's strenuous outbursts with dramatic declamation of menacing power. Ben Heppner, after starting Florestan's prison aria with an anguished cry, took a little while to get his tone focused; the tenor then related his youthful recollections and vision of Leonore with the warmth of hope that helped Florestan to survive. Rene Pape used his luxuriant, expressive bass to portray a good-natured Rocco with underlying humanity. As Marzelline, Jennifer Welch-Babidge showed a bright soprano of light but penetrating timbre and steady carrying power; at the end, when she discovered Fidelio's identity, the staging required her to take it badly, at odds with her own lines and the euphoria around her.

While the role of Jaquino offered only limited opportunity to Matthew Polenzani, he used his bel canto tenor to suggest a young man whose sympathy would help mend Marzelline's broken heart. The singers showed Mozartean grace when the music called for it, such as during the trio, "Gut, Sohnchen, gut," with its resonances of Die Zauberflote. Robert Lloyd officiated a bit dryly as Don Fernando -- seen by Beethoven as a central character, here sidelined by the upfront staging of the finale. The composer also gave the First and Second Prisoners some soulful phrases, affectingly turned by Eric Cutler (debut) and Alfred Walker.

Although never a box-office draw, Pelleas et Melisande belongs in at least the occasional repertory of a major opera house. When the Met's artistic director, James Levine, prepared this season's revival, he took care to cast it with extraordinary finesse. On the first night (Sept. 27), Dwayne Croft recreated a sensitive, vulnerable Pelleas, Susanne Mentzer an elusively suggestive Melisande.