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Simone Young  is made of stern stuff. With 30 hours to go before the concert performance, her Leonore falls ill. Can the show go on? 

Laurence Equilbey makes a convincing case for a younger, fresher Fidelio played on period instruments.

Under director Annabelle Comyn’s modern setting, we have a moving, convincing Fidelio to resonate with our current age.  

A vast panopticon cages strong musical performances in Wake-Walker's Fidelio at Glyndebourne, with Dorothea Herbert and Adam Smith standing out vocally and emotionally as Leonore and Florestan.

Giordano Bellincampi presides over a fleet and crisp performance of Beethoven's only opera, performed in Auckland Town Hall. 

Opera North performed a semi-staged and shortened Fidelio with a committed group of soloists, chorus and orchestra led by Mark Wiggelsworth.  With a pared Orchestra, the opera came across as a hymn of hope.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment gets to strut its stuff on the Glyndebourne stage in a concert of Brahms and Beethoven. 

Peter Mumford's intelligent staging concept and a knockout performance by a reduced Philharmonia Orchestra made this a night to remember.

An outstanding role debut from Davidsen, a star-studded vocal cast and a revelatory orchestral performance make a Beethoven anniversary performance to savour.

Realism elbows aside romanticism in this dark departure from a star-studded tradition.

Chung's mastery of orchestral colour and texture came into its own, the brooding introduction to Act 2 making for a harrowingly apocalyptic representation of tyranny.

The most talked about new production in the New National Theatre Tokyo’s 20th anniversary season undercuts Beethoven’s idealism.

Celebrating a courageous woman who is able to secure the release of her husband from prison, Beethoven’s sole opera Fidelio has music that is more compelling that its plot.

Skelton's Florestan provides the power in a refined, elegant performance that brings out the beauty in Beethoven's score.

In a temporary home, Cologne Opera have mounted a remarkably joyful production of Beethoven’s single, wonderful opera.

Strong casting but intrusive direction makes this Fidelio a bizarrely intriguing experience, salvaged by some memorable singing. 

The Met revived Beethoven's only opera Fidelio with a strong cast and excellent chorus and orchestra, with a production that celebrates liberty and love.

Despite a condescending commentary, a strong performance from Anja Kampe as Leonore made this concert staging of Fidelio at the Royal Festival Hall thoroughly enjoyable.

Released from the incarceration of directorial prison walls, Fidelio can still make a most powerful impact on the concert platform.

Not even the musical genius of Daniel Barenboim could turn Harry Kupfer’s irritating Sitzprobe production into a “Namenlose Freude”.

Stephen Barlow makes the case for Beethoven's earlier version of Fidelio, but doesn't quite manage to convince.

Klaus Florian Vogt’s Florestan redeems an otherwise disappointing Fidelio in Otto Schenk's timeless production.

A fairly conventional version of Beethoven's Fidelio at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva plays it safe and ultimately succeeds. 

Nina Stemme leads a successful revival of the Schenk production with a brilliant orchestra led by a passionate Ádám Fischer.

Adrianne Pieczonka and Anett Fritsch shone in an otherwise disappointing opening night, impaired by poor conducting and unimpressive staging.

The benefits of opera in concert are felt in Manchester with the BBC Philharmonic, with a performance of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. 

Fidelio waves goodbye to Barenboim at La Scala, and a fine production marks the occasion with a firework display. 

Garsington Opera takes a comedic approach to Beethoven's Fidelio. The result is amusing and musically strong, but lacking in both dynamic staging and emotional depth.

Jaquino dons the coat of the ousted Pizarro in this Volksoper production of Fidelio, clearly indicating that just as one evil head has been (literally) cut off, another is growing in its place… 

In his production of Fidelio for English National Opera, director Calixto Bieito sets out to completely contradict the work’s central tenet.

The lights dimmed and an announcer explained that following the destruction of earth’s ecosystem, there had been a scramble to rocket bases and a rush to transport surviving life to the nearest planet, Mars.

The Theater an der Wien has a storied history with Fidelio, having hosted the première of the work’s first and second versions in 1805 and 1806 respectively.

Turning his long-awaited aspiration into reality, musical director of Bristol Opera Arne Kovac conducted his favourite opera in concert in order to celebrate his 40th birthday. Beethoven’s masterpiece Fidelio is his only venture into opera and tells a story of love, happy marriage and freedom, complete with happy ending.

The Dresden Semperoper premiered a new production of Fidelio scarcely a month before the fall of East Germany. Much has changed in the intervening decade and a bit, but the Semperoper is still playing the same Fidelio. It doesn't take much knowledge of recent German history to understand why it was a sensation at the time.

Beethoven took over nine years to write and edit Fidelio, his only opera. It tells the story of Leonore, whose husband Florestan is being illegally held in prison. She disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, and gets a job in the prison in an attempt to save him.

The concept of freedom is at the heart of Opera North's current production of Fidelio. As soon as you open your programme, you are encouraged by the company's General Director Richard Mantle to consider Beethoven's only opera as having something to say about the struggle for liberty that has been taking place in the Middle East over the past few months.

Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, is on the most universal of themes: the oppression of the innocent by the powerful and the virtue of the struggle for a loved one. It could be set at any time in any place, from Ancient Rome or China to our modern world.

Otto Schenks Regieklassiker aus 1970 lässt die Herzen der Opern-Nostalgiker höherschlagen.

La mise en scène très cinématographique de Cyril Teste fait mouche et la distribution est à la hauteur du défi que représente l'unique opéra de Beethoven.

Was kommt nach der Freiheit? In seiner Fidelio-Neuinszenierung zeigt David Hermann eindrucksvoll, wie die Revolution ihre Kinder frisst.

Première de Fidelio triomphale à l'Opéra Comique, où Katherine Broderick (Leonore), arrivée quelques heures avant le lever de rideau pour remplacer la soprano défaillante, sauve non seulement Florestan... mais aussi la soirée !

Die Festwochen präsentieren unter der musikalischen Leitung von Marc Minkowski Achim Freyers Inszenierung des Beethoven-Klassikers.

Das Theater an der Wien feiert sein 10-jähriges Bestehen mit einer von Nikloaus Harnoncourt eingerichteten Fassung der Leonore von 1806. 

Andreas Gergen inszeniert den neuen Fidelio am Salzburger Landesthater zappenduster und verzichtet dabei weitgehend auf Requisiten. Gesanglich sieht es schon heller aus und besonders Franz Supper als Florestan kann in dieser Inszenierung stimmlich strahlen.