Fidelio

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that;  
"Beethoven said of Fidelio, “Of all my children, this is the one that caused me the worst birth pangs, the one that brought me the most sorrow and for that reason, it is the one most dear to me.” Maybe that is why Beethoven’s Fidelio exemplifies the depth of the artist’s spiritual nature and the excellence of his lived experience. We can take Beethoven’s Fidelio not only as an exemplar piece of music but also as a musical expression of moral exemplarity. This means that the ethical message of Fidelio can never be completely understood unless the ethical characteristic of Beethoven’s aesthetic representation is revealed. Beethoven’s Fidelio unlike many other musical oeuvres has continuously developed in maturity for different listeners in the past 200 years because it has been the spiritual expression of an attitude towards life that has within it the possibility of thinking life beyond suffering".