The only opera ever written by Ludwig Van Beethoven, Fidelio is the story of a devoted wife who, risking her own life, wants to save a loved one who has been unjustly imprisoned in prison. However, this is not another recreated 19th-century period piece, as director Michael Sturm has chosen to contextualise this struggle within something a little closer to home. The emerging Solidarity movement of the 1980s and other pro-democratic groups were a tangle of mutually dependent states, cooperating in the name of a more just social order. An important thread, raised both by the producers and Beethoven himself, is the issue of love and sacrifice for the other person. Is this a sufficiently stable foundation for the new order?
The artistic activity of the Baltic Opera focuses on presenting works that are distinguished from world culture not only by their musical arrangement, but also by playing with more important social contexts. Thus, the backdrop of central and eastern European social change in the late 20th century is the stage on which this opera is voiced.