In the 2025/26 season, Beethoven's Fidelio returns to the stage of the Vienna State Opera as a powerful plea for freedom and humanity - a work of timeless political and emotional power.
As Florestan wanted to expose Don Pizarro's brutal and lawless despotism, the latter had imprisoned him out of revenge in a state prison run by him, where Florestan was forced to vegetate under inhumane conditions. In order to free him, his wife Leonore, disguised as a man under the name Fidelio, hires herself out as a jailer. And Leonore actually manages to prevent the planned murder of her husband by Pizarro at the last moment. And so the just minister, who arrives at the prison for inspection purposes, is able to set his friend Florestan and all the other political prisoners free again.
Ludwig van Beethoven only completed a single opera, Fidelio, but it came in three versions: First, Joseph Sonnleithner, director of the Theater an der Wien, translated and adapted Pierre Gaveaux' and Jean Nicolas' French rescue opera Léonore, ou L'Amour conjugal into German. Beethoven set this libretto to music and premiered it in 1805 under the title Fidelio. A year later, the first revision was published as Leonore, and finally in 1814 the last version, the version commonly used today, was published as Fidelio. Fidelio was deliberately chosen for the reopening of the Vienna State Opera after its destruction in the Second World War - as a symbol of hope, brotherhood and freedom regained after the Nazi dictatorship.
Premiere December 16
Further performances: December 19, 22, 27 and 30, 2025
