Fidelio Overture

As Schumann remarked, whereas one overture would do for as many as four Rossini operas, one Beethoven opera required as many as four overtures. Beethoven was, of course, exceptionally conscienitious about that sort of thing. It must have distressed him conisderably that the first performance of the 1814 version of his opera had to be introduced by the Overture to The Ruins of Athens because he hadn’t been able to get the new Fidelio Overture ready on time – a project he felt to be absolutely necessary partly because its prececessor (known to us as Leonore No.3) was too long and gave away to much of the plot and partly because this final version of th opera reversed the order of the first two numbers in the score and so began not in C but in A major.

The E major tonality of the new Fidelio Overture, which was finished in time for the second 1814 performance, leads happily into the new first scene of the opera. Apart from that, its generalised air of rejoicing in anticipation of the last scene, and the possibily accidental key relationship with Leonore’s aria, “Komm, Hoffnung,” the Fidelio Overture seems to have little directly to do with the opera. But it does have subtle conneections, like the not easily definable but palpable simiarity between the beginning of the first number of the opera and the dramatic three-note motif at the start of the overture. It is more than an opening gesture, too, since it is immediately presente as an object of contemplation for the horn and clarinets, eventually incorporated into the main theme (by horns and clarinets again), prominently featured in the development, and irresistibly propelled through the Presto coda.

Schumann once remarked that, while one overture would do for as many as four Rossini operas, one Beethoven opera required as many as four overtures. He must have been thinking, in Rossini’s case, of something like the Overture to The Barber of Seville which had been attached to two rather more serious operas before, in an emergency, it was pressed into service for The Barber. Unlike Rossini, Beethoven was very concerned that the overture must be written specifically for the opera it introduces, perhaps borrowing material from it but certasinly reflecting its spirit. That is why Fidelio required four different overtures, the three now called Leonore Nos.1, 2 and 3 for early versions of the opera and Fidelio for the final version which he completed in 1814. It must have been distressing for him that the Fidelio Overture wasn’t finished in time for the first performance of the new version and, Rossini-like, he had to use the Overture to The Ruins of Athens instead. But it was ready for the second of performance three days later, when he no doubt noted how effective it was in the context.

Opinions differ on exactly how much the Fidelio Overture has to do with the opera itself. Some commentators claim that it is a character portrait of its central figure Leonore, who disguised as a boy under the name Fidelio, succeeds in rescuring her political-prisoner husband, Florestan, from captivity. Others reject that notion and argue that it is an abstract composition, in an appropriately heroic spirit but with no specific links to the story. Certainly, unlike the Leonore Overtures, it makes no use of themes from the opera. It is actually based on just three notes. They are first heard in a short and brisk introductory passage which alternates with a slower episode, featuring horns and then woodwind, before the quicker tempo and an expanded version of the three-note theme animate the eventful central section of the construction. A last recall of the slower episode, again featuring horns and woodwind, precedes a Presto coda dramatically driven to the closing bars by the dynamic three-note theme.