Beethoven's Fidelio with Dudamel and Deaf West Theatre at Walt Disney Concert Hall

The innovative semi-staged production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, created for both Deaf and hearing audiences, was called an “outright breakthrough for opera” by the Los Angeles Times when it was performed in 2022. With a story told through the composer’s music sung by hearing vocalists and the expressive gestural poetry of sign language by Deaf actors, the performances explore the search for communication—both primal and sublime—that is at the heart of all artistic expression. Premiered in 1805 as Beethoven was reckoning with his own Deafness, Fidelio is a tale of triumph over oppression as the noblewoman Leonore goes undercover to daringly rescue her husband from political imprisonment. Dudamel conducts the LA Phil and a star-studded cast in a groundbreaking event co-directed by Alberto Arvelo and Joaquín Solano and produced in collaboration with Los Angeles’ acclaimed Tony Award®-winning Deaf West Theatre (Artistic Director, David Kurs) and Venezuela’s Coro de Manos Blancas (White Hands Choir.) This concert includes sung German, supertitles in English, and performed International Sign Language. This performance is generously supported by the Lloyd E. Rigler – Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.