Fidelio
Opera Australia present at the Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House FIDELIO. Opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. Libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner and Georg Friedrich Treitschke, after Jean Nicholas Bouilly’s libretto Leonore ou L’amour conjugal. This is Beethoven’s only finished opera. Written during the dominance of Napoleon on the stage of international affairs it is in the tradition of what has been called the “rescue opera” which so the program notes tell us: “Broadly speaking ,these pieces tended to cultivate ‘realistic’ settings, with a recurrent theme of the heroic release of an innocent hero from unjust imprisonment –…