Love & Justice: In The Footsteps of Beethoven’s Rebel Opera

Followed by Q+A with director Kerry Candaele.

On September 11, 1973, a military coup Chile deposed the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, installed General Augusto Pinochet, and unleashed years of vicious repression.

Among those rounded up, imprisoned, and executed was Jorge Peña Hen , a composer and the conductor of a renowned children’s orchestra. Forty-five years later, documentary filmmaker Kerry Candaele traveled to Valparaiso, Chile, to make a film about Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio.

The opera is about a political prisoner, Florestan, unjustly held in a dungeon but ultimately rescued by his wife, Leonore, who has infiltrated the prison by dressing as a man.

Struck by the similarities between Belén’s story and the story of Fidelio, filmmaker Candaele has created a swirling, poetic, and deeply musical narrative that weaves them together, along with Beethoven’s own search for love and justice.