Biography
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), born in Bonn and active from 1792 in Vienna, is among the defining figures of Western music and composed only one opera—Fidelio, revised repeatedly between 1805 and 1814. Beethoven transformed every musical form he touched: the symphony (especially the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth), the piano sonata, the string quartet, the concerto. His Ninth Symphony, with its choral finale setting Schiller's Ode to Joy, became the anthem of European unity and is played at every major celebration of human freedom. Beethoven progressively lost his hearing from his late twenties onward; the most monumental works of his late period were composed in near-total deafness. Fidelio, a rescue opera celebrating marital love and political liberty, occupies a singular position in the operatic canon—a work of moral weight unmatched elsewhere in the repertoire.
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