Ludwig van Beethoven

Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b

The Leonore Overture No. 3 is the best known and most often performed of the three Leonore overtures Beethoven wrote for his single opera, Fidelio. But why are the overtures titled Leonore and not Fidelio, like the opera for which they were composed? Beethoven’s original title for his opera was Leonore, adapted from Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal (Leonore, or Conjugal Love). Bouilly’s libretto had been made into operas by three other composers before Beethoven, and the manager at the Theater an der Wien insisted Beethoven change his opera’s title to Fidelio, to avoid confusion.

Fidelio is a “rescue opera,” a popular genre of the time, whose plot centers on the rescue of the hero from evil forces. In Fidelio, it is the heroine, Leonore, in a gender role-reversal, who rescues her husband Florestan from imprisonment.

Fidelio’s initial premier in 1805 suffered from under-rehearsed players and mediocre singers. “A new Beethoven opera, Fidelio oder Die eheliche Liebe, has not pleased,” wrote one critic. “It was performed only a few times and after that remained completely empty.” Frustrated, Beethoven made revisions, the most significant being the combination of the first two acts into one, along with a new version of the overture. The following year Beethoven presented his newly revamped Fidelio, this time conducting it himself. Despite the changes, the opera failed again, and Beethoven shelved for another eight years.

Richard Wagner felt that even with the revisions, the main themes of the opera are only fully realized in the Leonore Overture No. 3, which “sets the drama more completely and movingly before us than ever happens in the broken action that ensues.” The music quotes Florestan’s aria from Act II, where he reminisces about happier times with Leonore, and also features a solo trumpet which foreshadows Florestan’s approaching freedom in the form of the disguised Leonore.

© Elizabeth Schwartz

NOTE: These program notes are published here by the Modesto Symphony Orchestra for its patrons and other interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may be contacted at www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com