The company of "Fiddler on the Roof" at Lyric Opera of Chicago. (Todd Rosenberg / HANDOUT)

Director Barrie Kosky’s breathtaking Lyric Opera staging of “Fiddler on the Roof” hit me with such an unexpected flood of emotion on Saturday night, I’ve rewritten this first paragraph numerous times. How best to persuade you to go?

I’ve no idea whether to start rhapsodizing about the masterpiece itself: a musical about the agonizing inevitability of change and the power of familial love that is so exquisitely structured as to have no 20th century equal. Communities under stress always make the best musicals. “Fiddler” is the great template for all that took such a truth to heart.

I had one opening that started with the critic’s self-professed qualifications as a way of emphasizing what is so special here, and coaxing those who think they’ve been there, done that. I’ve seen this show by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein some 20 times, and never had quite this experience. But the caveat there is that I have empty-nest syndrome and this is a show where your identification with the characters changes and intensifies as you age: “I don’t remember growing older, when did they?”

The obvious starting place is to outline exactly what Kosky’s production, which originated at the Komische Oper Berlin before the pandemic, achieves. This is not a traditional staging but a deep dive into the seas of metaphor.

The titular fiddler here is a small child (Drake Wunderlich) with a violin, who first appears wearing headphones and riding on a scooter, dwarfed by the Lyric’s huge stagehouse.

The kid — in a parent’s bedroom, we imagine — plays the famous first notes as if seeking their genesis, and then Steven Skybell’s Tevye literally appears out of a wardrobe, closely followed by, it seems, all of the village of Anatevka, rushing onto the stage in their period garb, telling their story for the ages.

The setting, by Rufus Didwiszus, is obsessed with wardrobes and boxes, maybe boxcars, and the contrasts between confinement and space, tradition and impermanence, rootedness and the transience of persecution that are so central to Jewish history. The lighting, originally designed by Diego Leetz, is marked by extensive use of footlights, which lends the proceedings the sepia tones of a documentary, especially given the bleak, simple backdrop of winter arbor, a confirmation of what those who must leave Anatevka have to say as they exit, that this was never much of a place, really. Just their own.

But the danger in focusing, like this, on the conceptual innovation is to imply that this “Fiddler” does not deliver what one expects from “Fiddler,” or that a young person seeing the show for the first time would somehow leave with something radically revised from the traditional Topol or Theodore Bikel experience with the Jerome Robbins choreography. In the last couple of years, revisionist directors like Daniel Fish (”Oklahoma!”) have created radical productions that repudiate classic American musicals’ original romanticism and their belief in American exceptionalism. Many of those productions, fascinating as they can be, appeal most to those tired of the originals.

This is not such a “Fiddler,” and hence my unbridled enthusiasm. It honors the traditions of the original, deepening them through such embrace of both human universality and Jewish specificity, with additional Yiddish sprinkled throughout. It freshens the original, removes all potential cliches and deepens both the conflict at the core of the piece (the end of Act 1 is startling and shocking) and the palpable, traumatizing isolation of Tevye’s entire family from its community as the papa bows to the wishes of his daughters; that’s a courageous choice and far more intense than you’ll expect and yet honors the piece so well.

The production is exquisitely sung; Skybell reads as a lighter, more youthful Tevye than is typical and his vocal choices democratize the whole. Debbie Gravitte, who sings Golde, is exquisite. And all three main daughters, sung by Lauren Marcus, Maya Jacobson and Austen Danielle Bohmer, are powerhouses — with Bohmer, a Broadway singer who is not (yet) well known, a particular revelation. The ensemble and supporting cast is uniformly excellent.

But this is fundamentally a production about the whole. There is not a hint of a common issue when opera companies essay musicals and the vocal expectations, limited rehearsal time and size of cast impede pacing or acting or moment-by-moment dramatic precision. Not here.

This is an operatic staging all right: The full orchestrations, as conducted by Kimberly Grigsby, are very much present as is the Lyric Opera Chorus rising to the dramatic demands of this director. Kosky uses a huge revolve and, more importantly, wide open spaces, making it seem at times as if Tevye and his loved ones are trying to tame their harsh environments by vocalizing their primal existence. You will get for the first time, perhaps, the size of this Anatevka, the force of its bonds, the scale of its challenges.

Inarguably, brooms and the traditional bottle dance (there is a new version) of Robbins’ imagination are not here and perhaps worthy of being missed. But they are remembered, deepened, appreciated, expanded.

The production ends, back with the modern-day kid with the violin, playing every note except the logical final one, the diaspora, its triumphs and tragedies, having just begun.

So. Go. The run is very limited. And a Broadway producer should bring this masterpiece to the show’s home.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

Review: “Fiddler on the Roof” (4 stars)

Where: Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker Drive

Tickets: $40-$330 at 312-827-5600 and lyricopera.org