Rescue opera

[1] Dyneley Hussey used the term in English in 1927 as a translation of Karl M. Klob's 1913 reference to Fidelio as "das sogenannte Rettungs- oder Befreiungsstück" in Die Oper von Gluck bis Wagner.

Henri Montan Berton's Les rigueurs du cloître (1790) has been described as the first rescue opera;[3][6] Luigi Cherubini's Lodoïska (1791) has also been named a founding work of the genre.

Bedřich Smetana's Dalibor (1868), which contains no spoken dialogue and which bears marks of Wagnerian influence, has nonetheless been called a rescue opera, in part because of its political themes.

The social changes of the period meant that opera must now appeal to the masses, and post-aristocratic, patriotic, idealistic themes—such as resistance to oppression, secularism, the political power of individuals and of people working together, and fundamental changes to the status quo—were popular.

[4][9][10] The Terror influenced stories of fear and imprisonment; a number of plots, including that of Fidelio and other operas based on the same libretto as well as that of Les deux journées, were taken from real life.

The fortissimo directions ff and even fff were often to be found in scores, and chromatic scales, tremolos, and intervals such as the diminished seventh heightened tension onstage.

[11] Jean Le Sueur, whose La Caverne was one of the more influential rescue operas, wrote in his score for Télémaque that arias should be sung with voix concentrée or in a manner that was très-concentrè.

[12] In its use of local color, heightened dramatic and emotional intensity, and inclusion of descriptive instrumental music, rescue opera preceded the works of German Romantics such as Carl Maria von Weber and, through him, Richard Wagner.