Fidelio

On October 7, 1989, Christine Mielitz's production of Beethoven's Fidelio premiered. While citizens outside the Semperoper were marching for democracy and human rights, the director staged the liberation opera in a contemporary prison yard with a watchtower and barbed wire. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his opera about a woman who, disguised as a man, tries to rescue her wrongly imprisoned husband, under the influence of revolution, tyranny, and war.