Well, I hate to sound curmudgeonly, but I think it is rather a big deal. As soon as the reprise of the melody starts (at "poco pesante"), Rodgers writes a steady accompaniment of half notes in a slow marching rhythm. He then emphasizes this intent motion by writing two measures of even half notes for the voice ("Till you find your..."), in contrast to the dotted and slightly syncopated vocal line the Abbess has sung until then.
The effect, I think, is of a calm but resolute march, one foot in front of the other. The suggestion is that the mountain will be climbed and the stream forded not by any frantic effort but by patient and steadfast labor.
That "steadfast" effect is emphasized by having the vocal part land solidly and squarely on the strong beats of the melody, as in the two measures I mentioned above. The culmination of this motion is the last dominant A-flat, anticipated in the last strong beat before the accompaniment lands solidly on the tonic D-flat major resolution.
The problem with delaying that last note, i.e., singing it after the indicated beat, is that it interrupts the steady movement Rodgers has set up. The stalwart onward march is interrupted momentarily, and abruptly the emphasis is shifted away from the steady but calm rhythm Rodgers has so carefully set up. You get a good A-flat, but at the cost of the overall emotional impact of the piece.
Maybe this is just a matter of taste, but I think this song is more like a classical piece than a pop song, and the classical vocal style calls for attack squarely on the beat, especially when that beat is such a powerful downbeat. If the singer needs to take a breath between "your" and "dream," the time for that breath is (in classical vocal music) always stolen from the earlier note, i.e., before the bar line, so that the attack on the strong beat can be exactly in time.
Which is to say, if McDonald needed that breath, I think she should have sung "your" (quarter note), breath {quarter rest), "dream" (downbeat on measure 59).
The ending of this song reminded me of one of the pitfalls of singing to pre-recorded tracks, which is that the singer is locked into a tempo that, in the moment of performance, may feel fractionally too slow or too fast. Had McDonald been singing this with a live orchestra and conductor, it would have been fairly simple for her to subtly speed up the tempo of the "poco pesante" reprise just slightly and therefore not need that long preparation for the climactic A-flat.
This song is always difficult for lyric sopranos, and the last page is tiring for any sort of voice, so that last A-flat is not easy to get exactly in focus with enough breath to last for the 13 beats (plus fermata) Rodgers indicates. But the way McDonald did it felt a little desperate to me -- which is a pity, because she was so very fine everywhere else in this part.
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