Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, seems to have been born under an unlucky star. The first version, titled Leonore after the opera’s heroine, premiered at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on November 20, 1805, only seven days after Napoleon’s army had entered the city. Those who normally would have attended had left the city, and any French soldiers in the audience probably saw subversion in the opera’s theme of man’s struggle for liberty against tyranny. The opera closed after three performances.
Beethoven revised and shortened the work, and a revival of Leonore was staged in 1806 that was met more favorably. However, this time it was withdrawn from performance because Beethoven suspected the theatre management was not paying him his fair share of the receipts. Eight years later, with Napoleon’s army suffering defeats and the Viennese feeling pluckier about tweaking tyrants, Beethoven revised the opera yet again. It premiered at the Kärtnertortheater in Vienna on May 23, 1814, under the new title Fidelio, the name the disguised Leonore uses while helping her political prisoner husband to escape from jail. It was a success both in the eyes of the public and, perhaps more importantly, to Beethoven himself. Of its difficult gestation, the composer wrote, “Of all my children, this is the one that cost me the worst birth pangs, the one that brought me the most sorrow; and for that reason it is the most dear to me.”
Along with his three versions of the opera, Beethoven composed four versions of the overture: one for each of the performances, plus one believed to have been written for a planned performance of the second Leonore in Prague that never took place. The Fidelio Overture (Opus 72b) was his final version.
The earlier overtures quoted sections of the opera, and the second in particular was a bit of a ‘spoiler,’ using much material from the second act climax. In contrast, this final version does not use any themes from the opera, instead juxtaposing a heroic first theme (introduced by the horns and woodwinds) with a brighter, forceful second theme for horn and strings. The growing sense of tension as the soulful main theme continually segues into more vigorous passages sets the stage for the heroic struggles of the lovely Leonore to rescue her beloved Florestan.