The revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” that opens at the Broadway Theater on Sunday night includes all the cherished characters (Tevye, Golde, their five daughters, and their shtetl neighbors) and all the unforgettable language (“Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!”).  But this production, the sixth on Broadway in 51 years, also opens and closes with a brief, wordless, modern framing device — a bareheaded Tevye in modern clothing, and, at the end, an inescapable visual nod to the current global refugee crisis — that has stirred discussion among “Fiddler” devotees.  For months, the innovation, which consumes perhaps a minute in a show that is 155 minutes long, has been debated by the show’s Tony-winning director, Bartlett Sher, and its Tony-winning lyricist, Sheldon Harnick, who at 91 is the last surviving member of the show’s original creative team. Mr. Sher was adamant that the revival should explicitly, if briefly and quietly, connect to current events; Mr. Harnick repeatedly objected, leery of any changes to a show that has totemic power for several generations of theatergoers.  Sheldon Harnick is a titan of musical theater, best known for writing the words to “Fiddler on the Roof.” Now he’s 91, and he’s not slowing down.  Ultimately, after weeks of previews during which the framing device was adjusted and argued over, Mr. Harnick, who had the right to block the change, acceded to the staging.  He was persuaded, he said, by audience feedback. “To my surprise, it had an extraordinary reaction from a significant part of the audience that finds it very moving,” he said in an interview. “They’ve written letters to the producer, they’ve told the cast, they express great emotion.”  The debate offers a window into the complexity of reviving beloved stage shows. Long-ago creations are often radically reimagined without incident — Atlantic Theater Company is now running what it calls a “rip-off” of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” a show called “These Paper Bullets!” featuring songs by Billie Joe Armstrong in the style of the Beatles. And many revivals, including recent productions of “Porgy and Bess” and “Gigi,” have involved authorized (and, in the “Porgy” case, controversial) revisions.  But “Fiddler” is in a class by itself. It is among the best known, most popular and most staged shows in the history of musical theater, and it is hard to overstate its significance to the American Jewish imagination. There have been plenty of variations over the years, particularly in school and community productions — Mr. Harnick unhappily recalls a production set in a tenement, rather than in Anatevka, and one in which a tree was planted on the stage and grew throughout the show.  But a Broadway revival is high visibility, so the stakes are greater and the scrutiny closer; the last “Fiddler,” in 2004, was derided as insufficiently Jewish.  “People generally have deep attachments to musicals, and to how they remember them, but ‘Fiddler’ has that quality more than any musical that’s ever existed, because of the force it had, particularly for Jewish Americans, in the middle of the 20th century,” said Alisa Solomon, the author of “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’” “In some ways, there is more flexibility for Jews regarding Jewish ritual itself than there is with ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’”  This production is passionately respectful of the original; intense, but deeply familiar, to anyone who has seen the show before. There are subtle but crucial visual changes — in particular, it features work by a contemporary choreographer, Hofesh Shechter, whereas most productions rely primarily on the original choreography by Jerome Robbins.  But the most striking change is the framing device: At the start, a bareheaded man, wearing a red parka and carrying a book, walks onto a stage that is empty but for a chair and a sign that says, in Cyrillic, “Anatevka.” The man (played by Danny Burstein) speaks the show’s prologue words (“A fiddler on the roof? Sounds crazy, no?”), and, as he does, he puts on a cap, removes his coat, untucks a prayer shawl, and, as if investigating his past, transforms into Tevye, leading the cast into “Tradition.”  At the end of the show, the device is mirrored — the Jews of Anatevka are leaving their hometown, under orders from the Russian government, and as they pull their carts around the stage, the actor emerges with red coat, bare head and book, picks up Tevye’s cart alongside his family, and joins the exodus.  “You see him enter the line of refugees, making sure we place ourselves in the line of refugees, as it reflects our past and affects our present,” Mr. Sher said. “I’m not trying to make a statement about it, but art can help us imagine it, and I would love it if families left the theater debating it.”  For his part, Mr. Harnick calls Mr. Sher’s direction, “superb,” the production “wonderful,” and the cast “possibly the best we’ve ever had.”  Mr. Sher is no stranger to working with iconic properties. His productions at Lincoln Center of “South Pacific” and “The King and I” both won Tony awards for best musical revival. And he insisted that his approach to “Fiddler” was deeply protective of the original. “‘Fiddler’ is an extraordinarily well-made musical, and this is not an improvement; I’m not trying to change it,” he said. “I’m just trying to heighten the experience.”  “I can’t imagine starting in the traditional way — it never occurred to me,” Mr. Sher said. “We have to ask questions about where we are now.”  A version of this article appears in print on December 19, 2015, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Tradition’ With Twist in Revival of Musical. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
A revival opening on Sunday gives a nod to today’s refugees, an addition by the director Bartlett Sher that raised objections from the lyricist, Sheldon Harnick.