Overture (Fidelio), op. 72

Beethoven's only opera exists in three versions. The first, in three acts, was given at the Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805, days after French troops occupied the city; it closed after three nights. A shortened two-act revision followed in 1806, and the definitive version, with the text reworked by Georg Friedrich Treitschke, was staged at the Kärntnertortheater on 23 May 1814. Four overtures survive from the process. The source, Bouilly's Léonore, belonged to the French rescue-opera genre; Beethoven turned it into an argument about political imprisonment.