In the 250th anniversary year of Beethoven, the Perth Festival’s Fidelio – a joint undertaking between the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, the WASO Chorus, and the WA Opera – was an ambitious, highly anticipated musical event. Infused with themes of political oppression and personal liberty, the composition of Beethoven’s only complete opera was itself a thing of turmoil, with the composer revising the opera several times between 1805 and 1814 and churning out four separate overtures. The Fidelio of the Perth Festival was thus participating in a time-honoured tradition of tinkering with the work, as the concert staging of the opera replaced nearly all the spoken German dialogue with narration written by novelist and poet Alison Croggon. Though there were moments that didn’t quite hit the mark, this Fidelio was a rousing and triumphantly optimistic experience.

Operas are a marathon, not a sprint, and one got the sense that WASO was saving its collective energy for the score’s ‘big’ moments. The overture, though opening with hearty gusto, was soon undercut by some shaky wind intonation and an overall orchestral sound that wasn’t as full as it could...