This is in every way a superb performance, definitely one of the best ever of a difficult and frequently misunderstood opera. The crowning glory is undoubtedly Vishnevskaya's historic Leonore. In 1957, her voice was quite a bit lighter than one usually expects in this role: compared to singers such as Flagstad, Nilsson, and Norman, she sounds much less like an Isolde and more like a Donna Anna, with all the top and bottom notes very firmly in place. The result is a performance of Fidelio that anchors the opera in the late 18th/early 19th centuries instead of turning it (wrongly, I think) into a proto-Wagnerian music drama. Vishnevskaya's interpretation is entirely convincing: the yearning, the anxiety, the heroic devotion to a just cause are all there, and the character comes to life as she rarely does elsewhere. The rest of the cast is also very good, if not quite on the same exalted level; in particular, Nelepp is an excellent Florestan. Melik-Pashayev's taut, dramatic reading is splendid. Unfortunately, the studio recording emphasizes the voices and doesn't do full justice to the orchestra, but this is a minor cavil. The Russian translation isn't a problem at all (I know the libretto more or less by heart anyway!) -- the drama is so vividly brought to life that you won't need to follow every word (I suspect that a Russian speaker probably could as the diction sounds excellent throughout, but I am not a very good judge of that). If this recording were in German, it would be universally recognized as a classic.

Melik-Pashayev's conducting of the overture lets us know right away that this performance is going to be played as if the lives of everyone involved depended on it. The young Vishnevskaya sings passionately, yet accurately. Her big aria in the first act is sung with great assurance. She takes the big run from top B to the one two octaves down all in one breath. If you only know this singer from her recordings in the late 70's and 80's, you're in for a treat. Nelepp sings Florestan with that focused intensity of his that made him a star in Russia. The other singers are all very good.I don't speak Russian, but the dialogue seems to follow the German closely though there are a couple times where the translation goes its own way.The sound is very good, transferred from records. Don't allow the fact that this in Russian deter you from hearing this performance. Besides you've heard this in German umpteen times!