Editing Fidelio (section)

==20th-century performance history==
[[File:Fotothek df pk 0000016 b 041 Szenenbilder.jpg|thumb|upright|{{center|Florestan ([[Günther Treptow]]) and Leonore (Karina Kutz); September 1945, [[Deutsche Oper Berlin]]}}]]

''Fidelio'' was [[Arturo Toscanini]]'s first complete opera performance given in the United States since 1915 and the first to be broadcast on radio, over the [[NBC]]  network, in December 1944. Toscanini conducted the [[NBC Symphony Orchestra]], featuring soloists [[Rose Bampton]], [[Jan Peerce]] and [[Eleanor Steber]], with the performance divided into two consecutive broadcasts. The recording of the opera was later issued by [[RCA Red Seal|RCA Victor]] on LP and CD.<ref>[http://www.pristineclassical.com/paco077.html "Toscanini conducts Beethoven's ''Fidelio''"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131227234147/http://www.pristineclassical.com/paco077.html |date=27 December 2013}}, details and reviews.</ref>

''Fidelio'' was the first opera performed in Berlin after the end of World War II, with the [[Deutsche Oper]] staging it under the baton of [[Robert Heger]] at the only undamaged theatre, the [[Theater des Westens]], in September 1945.<ref>''Conchological Miscellany'', Volume 4, p. 23; ''[[Cambridge Companions to Music|The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies]]'', Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 45.</ref> At the time, [[Thomas Mann]] remarked: "What amount of apathy was needed [by musicians and audiences] to listen to ''Fidelio'' in [[Himmler]]'s Germany without covering their faces and rushing out of the hall!"<ref>Berthold Hoeckner, ''Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment'', Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 47.</ref>

Not long after the end of World War II and the fall of [[Nazism]], conductor [[Wilhelm Furtwängler]] remarked in Salzburg in 1948:
<blockquote>
[T]he conjugal love of Leonore appears, to the modern individual armed with realism and psychology, irremediably abstract and theoretical.... Now that political events in Germany have restored to the concepts of human dignity and liberty their original significance, this is the opera which, thanks to the music of Beethoven, gives us comfort and courage.... Certainly, ''Fidelio'' is not an opera in the sense we are used to, nor is Beethoven a musician for the theater, or a dramaturgist. He is quite a bit more, a whole musician, and beyond that, a saint and a visionary. That which disturbs us is not a material effect, nor the fact of the 'imprisonment'; any film could create the same effect. No, it is the music, it is Beethoven himself. It is this 'nostalgia of liberty' he feels, or better, makes us feel; this is what moves us to tears. His ''Fidelio'' has more of the Mass than of the Opera to it; the sentiments it expresses come from the sphere of the sacred, and preach a 'religion of humanity' which we never found so beautiful or necessary as we do today, after all we have lived through. Herein lies the singular power of this unique opera.... Independent of any historical consideration ... the flaming message of ''Fidelio'' touches deeply.

We realize that for us Europeans, as for all men, this music will always represent an appeal to our conscience.<ref>Khpye, Eonikoe, [http://www.thenationalherald.com/content/pdf/inserts/2010/fidelio_2010.pdf "Estate and Collection of George and Ursula Andreas"], ''The National Herald'', 13 November 2010, accessed 17 April 2011.</ref>
</blockquote>

On 5 November 1955, the [[Vienna State Opera]] was re-opened with ''Fidelio'', conducted by [[Karl Böhm]]. This performance was the first live television broadcast by [[ORF (broadcaster)|ORF]] at a time when there were about 800 television sets in Austria.

The first night of ''Fidelio'' at the [[Semperoper]] in Dresden on 7 October 1989 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the DDR ([[East Germany]]) coincided with violent [[Monday demonstrations in East Germany|demonstrations]] at the city's main train station. The applause after the "Prisoners' Chorus" interrupted the performance for considerable time, and the production by [[Christine Mielitz]] had the chorus appear in normal street clothes at the end, signifying their role as representatives of the audience.<ref>[http://www.zeit.de/1989/43/kurz-in-dresden "Kurz in Dresden"] by [[Martin Walser]], ''[[Die Zeit]]'', 20 October 1989 {{in lang|de}}.</ref> Nearly five weeks later, on 9 November 1989, the [[Berlin Wall#The Fall|fall of the Berlin Wall]] signalled the end of East Germany's regime.