David Hermann: FIDELIO is a jumble of opposites at loggerheads with one another: private versus state, one versus all, supposed liberty versus imprisonment, justice versus injustice. And all this is playing out in the crucible of a jail.

Johannes Schütz: Sometimes you get a production constructing a mock concentration camp onstage, but that’s somewhat perverse, if you ask me. I don’t think we need watchtowers and electric fences. What we need is to find alternative ways of depicting repression.

Hermann: Being subjected to arbitrary detention in an alien location, as Florestan is, is still a burning issue today. It’s just that you rarely see a woman as strong as Leonore getting involved.

Schütz: Florestan’s wife Leonore steals into the prison in disguise and starts looking for her husband. The breeches role, it should be said, has a history stretching much further back than the gender debate. It starts as Volkstheater with Ludwig van Beethoven and gets heavier and darker. This opera packs quite a punch.

Hermann: And in the end the punch comes in the form of a kind of liberation. The woman becomes a stylised heroine, but is that tantamount to a happy ending? Is it not more the case that the couple gets submerged in all the exaggerated feelings and jubilation?