The difference in title is nominal, circumstantial and a little misleading: both of these versions of Beethoven’s only opera are still work in progress towards the piece we know as Fidelio, finally presented in 1814. In fact the 1806 version, revived last March at the Theater an der Wien, was the only one of the three originally presented with the composer’s preferred emphasis on the heroine’s real name, as Leonore (‘or The Triumph of Wifely Love’).

The cast for Opera Lafayette act modestly and sing well enough within a functional set and an opéra comique style that is considerably more intimate than any previous recording of the opera (in any of its versions): even including Jaquino skulking in the background of the Prisoners’ Chorus I can count the number of singers on stage with two hands. What initially comes over as a covered tone on the part of Pascale Beaudin’s Marzelline transpires to be a more general shortcoming in the boxy acoustic of a small New York theatre and over-distant recording. The wobbly camerawork also presents frustrating evidence that the skill and care of Ryan Brown’s work in the pit is not matched by other production values.

With a reconstruction of the missing material from Florestan’s scene that opened Act 3 (in 1805), Brown and his forces probably take us as close as we will ever get to an ‘original’ Fidelio. The effect of Will Crutchfield’s completion, however, and its natural modulation into the grave-digging scene, is somewhat compromised by both Jean-Michel Richer’s parched tone and the rather dismal applause when he finishes.

The efforts of Rocco and Leonore, shovelling away in the dark, offer an unfortunately apt metaphor for many Leonore/Fidelios, not only this one. The 1806 revision from Vienna would be welcome for filling a significant gap in the discography, but it does a lot more than that. Beethoven may have cut and remodelled the score under sufferance, but Manfred Honeck and Christoph Waltz show nothing but absolute faith in the dramaturgical success of the results.

Now cast in the familiar two acts, with the finale of each tightened to considerable advantage, Beethoven’s second thoughts retain the duet for Marzelline and Leonore and the final scene in the dungeon. To Rocco is restored his ‘Gold’ aria (which Beethoven cut in 1806) and the dialogue has been pruned (and then brought to life) with the cinematic hand of a gardener who knows that cruelty can be kindness, that thinning out lets in air and light.

Might this make for the best of all possible compromises in a notoriously awkward piece? The circumstances – recorded in a rush for online broadcast before all the lights went out last March – played to the strengths of director Waltz. Between them, he and video director Felix Breisach have, in effect, revived the genre of TV opera best known for big-budget affairs from the 1970s such as Joseph Losey’s Don Giovanni and August Everding’s productions for Unitel. Throwing out clunky naturalism, however, has cleaned up the stage much as Beethoven cleaned up the score in 1806 (Honeck’s phrase) and allowed for any number of strikingly lit and photographed scenes (most of Act 2 takes place in a near-darkness that works much better on screen than it likely would in the theatre). There is a finely judged open ending to remind us, as Chris Walton observed in a recent piece for Opera, that Ministers and Pizarros alike have the habit of survival.

All the leads look and sound the part. Thoroughly run into their roles from Honeck’s concert performances in Pittsburgh shortly before the staging, Nicole Chevalier and Eric Cutler both excel, she in the even trickier fioriture of ‘Komm Hoffnung’ than the 1814 version, he in the more shaded, less black-and-white heroism of Florestan. Christof Fischesser presents a much more rounded Rocco than for Abbado (Decca, 9/11) and Mélissa Petit makes a marvellously spirited Marzelline. Taking full advantage of his retro-enhanced part, Gábor Bretz presents a sociopath of chilling realism and caprice, got up with surely a nod to Waltz’s own latter-day success in the role of Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Where Brown’s direction is more number-orientated, attentive to the style and conventions of each section, Honeck works off the vocal colours of his principals and the Wiener Symphoniker’s Beethoven style as newly reinvigorated by Philippe Jordan. Unlike both Brown and René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2/20), he underplays and integrates the blindside dissonance after Leonore reveals herself (another regrettable but shrewdly chosen victim to Beethoven’s red pen in 1814; he knew the wisdom of killing your darlings), but the pacing throughout is taut and sure, including a good, old-fashioned quick pulse for ‘O namenlose Freude’. Don’t miss it.