Hold your hats and say hallelujah. Patti LuPone has finally been allowed to show it to ya.

For more than a decade, a behind-the-scenes skirmish between her and co-creator Arthur Laurents had prevented her from tackling the greatest role in arguably the greatest American musical, 1959’s “Gypsy.” Ms. LuPone, whose non-pareil mix of brains, brass, and brute dramatic force has made her as formidable a stage presence as Broadway has seen in decades, seemed destined to—and yet fated never to — scale the vulgar heights and cavernous depths of the überstage mom Momma Rose.

But no locked door (or childhood psyche or set of restaurant silverware) is safe around any Rose worth her salt, and all the necessary hatchets have now been buried. In as much as the coast can ever be clear for Rose — who drags her two daughters and their woebegone vaudeville act across Depression-era America until one deserts her and the other becomes the famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee — the stage was set for a unique pairing of actor and role.

Such possibilities, of course, usually result in letdowns more often than triumphs. “If I could’ve been, I would’ve been,” Rose laments after “Rose’s Turn,” her shattering aria of abandonment, “and that’s show business.” Well, Ms. LuPone could and should be a Rose for the ages. And she is.

Coming just four years after the gutsy but flustered Sam Mendes-Bernadette Peters revival, the current production makes its home at City Center, which, in its latest attempt to expand its Encores! concert series of unsung musicals into more marketable territory, has stepped up its production budget and created a new series, Encores! Summer Stars. The motives may be suspect, but it’s churlish to grumble when the end product is as riveting as “Gypsy,” which deserves a far longer run than the slated three weeks.

Mr. Laurents, who also directed this “Gypsy,” as he had revivals in 1974 and 1989, shrewdly opted not to fix a work that is decidedly not broken. Composer Jule Styne, lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who was still a few years shy of his 30th birthday in 1959), Mr. Laurents, and director/choreographer Jerome Robbins each matched or surpassed their career highs: No musical has ever supplied more joy on a scene-by-scene, verse-byverse level while still laying the groundwork for a harrowing domestic drama. How can effervescent toe-tappers such as “Together (Wherever We Go)” and “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” possibly lead into “Rose’s Turn,” the one mad scene in all of musical theater that stands up to Donizetti and Bellini?

Robbins’s choreography and virtually all of his original staging remain intact; instead, Mr. Laurents toys with the audience’s expectations here and there without ever flouting them. From the first few seconds of the still-unmatched overture, when conductor Patrick Vaccariello holds the tremolo for just a few extra milliseconds before the brass section kicks in, Mr. Laurents wisely heeds only the first half of Rose’s advice to her awkward daughter Louise (Laura Benanti): “You make ’em beg for more — and then don’t give it to them!” (The unfortunate inverse of this edict comes in the brief, anticlimactic scene following “Rose’s Turn,” in which the audience begs for no more — and gets some anyway.)

With the partial exception of Ms. Benanti, who looks and sounds divine but strains to match Ms. Lu-Pone in a pivotal confrontation, Mr. Laurents has assembled a note-perfect cast. As the long-suffering agent Herbie, who yearns to become Husband no. 4 for Rose, Boyd Gaines once again manages the feat of making decency dramatically compelling. Tony Yazbeck crackles with energy as the go-getting chorus boy Tulsa, while Sami Gayle and Leigh Ann Larkin capably share the role of Rose’s favored daughter, June. And the deliciously seedy trio of Marilyn Caskey, Nancy Opel, and especially Alison Fraser grind out every one of the many laughs in “Gimmick,” Styne and Mr. Sondheim’s shameless salute to burlesque. The one missed opportunity comes with the trio “Together,” in which the loose-limbed camaraderie among Rose, Herbie, and Louise feels forced.

But no matter how strong the supporting cast, this “Gypsy” belongs, as it must, to the smothering, conniving, ferociously ambitious monster at its center. Ms. LuPone has a healthy dose of Merman’s legendary vitality: Notes linger in the air with a sort of sculpted robustness, and she knows how to take ownership of the huge City Center stage with a minimum of extraneous movement. Even with some disconcertingly fast tempos — when Rose gets a brainstorm, the words fly out of her almost faster than she can formulate them — every syllable of Mr. Sondheim’s lyrics emerges clearly. Diction had been an issue for Ms. LuPone in the past, but a series of recent collaborations with the 20th century’s nimblest lyricist seems to have cured that.

And when Rose abruptly shifts her attentions from June to the heretofore ignored Louise in the towering Act I finale, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” the vision of Louise’s inevitable ascent visibly takes shape in Ms. LuPone’s clenched jaw and fervent, pleading eyes. Louise clearly has neither the talent nor the inclination to be a star, but for one heart-stopping second, we share in Rose’s delusion. We see the world as only she can, as a place where headlining the Orpheum Circuit trumps having a home or a family or a reason to breathe once the curtain comes down. It is a terrifying and an exhilarating sight.

Until July 29 (West 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-581-1212).