Rescue opera rescue opera; Luigi Cherubini's "Lodoïska" (1791) has also been named a founding work of the genre. Other examples from the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, the period when rescue opera flourished, are Nicolas Dalayrac's "Camille ou Le souterrain" (1791), Jean-François Le Sueur's "La caverne" (1793), and Cherubini's "Les deux journées" (1800). While the rescue opera was primarily a French genre, the two best-known operas in the genre are not French. Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fidelio" is by far the most famous example today, and was also influenced by the German "Singspiel". A work which is similar
Fidelio is what moves us to tears. His "Fidelio" has more of the Mass than of the Opera to it; the sentiments it expresses come from the sphere of the sacred, and preach a 'religion of humanity' which we never found so beautiful or necessary as we do today, after all we have lived through. Herein lies the singular power of this unique opera... Independent of any historical consideration ... the flaming message of "Fidelio" touches deeply. We realize that for us Europeans, as for all men, this music will always represent an appeal to our conscience. On 5 November 1955,