By Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig Van Beethoven composed only one opera in his life. He had strong opinions about the opera of his day and found many of the contemporary German libretti lacking in appropriate seriousness. At the beginning of the 19th century, Beethoven’s mind was heavy with the themes of stoic suffering and heroic resolve. Put off by what he felt were trite tales of moral ambiguity and emotional triviality in his own land, he finally found the noble inspiration he sought in revolutionary France.
Written and twice revised between 1804 and 1814, Fidelio is based on Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s Leonore, ou L’amour conjugal, (Leonore, or the Triumph of Married Love in its English translation). The story follows the heroine, Leonore, who disguises herself as a young man, Fidelio, in order to find and save her jailed husband, Florestan. Though many believe him to be dead, Leonore feels in her heart that he lives and through her ingenuity, virtue, and steadfastness, she sets out to find her beloved husband.
