Poignant notes carry Topol

This is the conundrum Chaim Topol has grappled with throughout his remarkable career. He has performed the part of Tevye, the fatalistic milkman in “Fiddler on the Roof,’’ a role he will bring to Boston for his farewell tour starting Tuesday at the Boston Opera House, well over 2,500 times, including an award-winning performance in the film version. After so many renditions of “Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum,’’ from “If I Were a Rich Man,’’ Topol says his inspiration today comes not from the show’s cheerier moments - the fleeting joys of life, like weddings and camaraderie - but its darkest ones. The second act of the play, he says, which includes a horrific attack on Jews and their expulsion from their poor village, is where he finds his drive now.

“The darkness is not a challenge. It’s there,’’ he said. “You deliver it and make sure you don’t relieve it with laughter. I don’t want to relieve the audience. I want them to ache together with me. What I’m trying to do is not let the audience come out lighthearted.’’

Topol was 29 and living in Israel when he filled in for the Israeli actor playing Tevye in a production there. And now he is in the midst of his last run, a tour through America and Canada that will end next summer.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s the fourth or 40th or 400th time,’’ Topol said recently by telephone from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where the show’s latest revival was playing. “The job of an actor is to make sure the audience hears and feels it for the first time. Otherwise it’s a bore.’’

He has long since joined the elite roster of actors who have owned a stage character over time, like Carol Channing in “Hello, Dolly’’ and Yul Brynner in “The King and I.’’ But Topol, perhaps more than anyone, has fused actor and character into a seamless package on stage.

The actor is going strong today. He is careful about what he eats and he stays in shape. With his gray beard and his basso profundo still rumbling at the bottom of our audio range, he looks and sounds like nothing so much as a biblical patriarch.

The story of “Fiddler’’ is based on the writings of Sholem Aleichem, and is set in a tiny shtetl in czarist Russia in 1905 called Anatevka. But despite the story’s dark notes, the songs soar. Indelible numbers like “If I Were A Rich Man’’ and the lovely “Sunrise, Sunset’’ are part of the American musical landscape and, like all Broadway classics, their appeal crosses cultures, genders, and generations.

The play won nine Tonys after opening on Broadway in 1964, when Zero Mostel played Tevye, and was the first Broadway musical to pass the 3,000-performance mark. Topol emerged on the scene a few years later and starred in the London revival in 1967 and was nominated for best actor in the 1971 film version.

Over the years, he has been determined to strike the balance in the musical between light and dark. He even killed some of the funnier lines he was to deliver when he didn’t think they were appropriate. “There were some excellent jokes,’’ he said, “And it takes a lot for an actor to kill his own jokes. You fight for a joke. But it was more important to carry the sadness there than relieve with a joke.’’

The Jewish condition is never far from his focus. During the London revival in 1967, the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and surrounding Arab countries. “People were saying, ‘It’s going to be another Shoah,’ ’’ he recalled. “Rabbis sanctified graveyards for hundreds of thousands.’’ Topol left the London production and rushed back to Israel, where he remained through the war.

“This was a bad time in human history, and we should not forget it,’’ he said. “In the play, when the constable comes on the wedding day to announce the expulsion, he tells the orchestra to play on. I say no, because for me this is coming through the gates of Auschwitz - Arbeit Macht Frei - with the orchestra playing as people were going to the gas chambers.

“This is my personal association. It absolutely never gets old. Every day I have a chance to deliver this play, I cherish.’’

Sammy Dallas Bayes directs this tour, as he did two other revivals with Topol, and has been associated with the show in one form or another since dancing in the original in 1964.

“What’s happened is that age has really enhanced [Topol] in that role tremendously,’’ Bayes said. “It manifests itself in less actor showing and more character showing.’’ Also, Bayes added, “Topol has always approached it from a dramatic point of view, not as a comedian. Zero was a comedian. Topol is not a comedian.’’

Directing Topol to play Tevye might seem like giving cello lessons to Yo Yo Ma. So does the man really need to be told much after playing the role for more than 40 years? Just to act his age. “I say, ‘Chaim, you don’t have to move like a 70-year-old man anymore,’ ’’ said Bayes. “ ‘You are a 70-year-old man.’ ’’

Topol relishes his new physical freedom. “At 29, I knew I had to restrain some muscles to make sure I didn’t suddenly jump in a way that destroyed the image of an elderly man,’’ he explained. “I walked slower, made sure I wasn’t too erect when I danced. It was quite a job. Now, as I pass the age of 55 by 20 years, I feel totally free to jump and dance as much as I feel like.’’

His own life experience has also sent him deeper into the part. “When I started,’’ he explains, “I had an 8-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. I had to imagine what it must be like to be a father to five daughters. The same with being married for 25 years. That sounded like a lifetime to me. I was married nine years at the time. Now I sing ‘Do You Love Me?’ from the perspective of 53 years of marriage.’’

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.