Beethoven's Opera Fidelio Seen As a Metaphor for the Worldwide Effort of Practitioners to Stop the Persecution in China

January 6th, 2002

In this opera, the tyrant Don Pizarro has incarcerated the protagonist Florestan in a secret dungeon for revealing the truth about Don Pizarro's secret, shady dealings. Don Pizarro's gruesome character is exposed as he speaks about "cooling his revenge." In the meantime, Florestan, from his lonely prison cell, says that he harbours no resentment, because "he has done his duty to speak the truth," which has given him strength and peace of mind. At the same time his wife Leonore, disguised as Fidelio, gains access to the prison and attempts to rescue him. At the climax of the opera, she stands before Florestan as a human shield as Pizarro attempts to kill him. In the end, justice triumphs through the advent of compassion and the scene ends in overflowing jubilation.

Falun Gong practitioners in China intervene with truth-clarifying activities about Falun Gong that bring to daylight the unjustified persecution and the torture of practitioners in China. They are similar to the choir of prisoners in Fidelio, which surfaces and sings of freedom and the desire to lift their hearts and hope for God's intervention. The prisoners in the opera even sing about how they are visually and auditorily monitored, which brings to mind how the Chinese practitioners' telephones are tapped and their conversations recorded.

Because practitioners in China hold fast to the virtues of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, they are being incarcerated, like Florestan, without due process of law, to be "re-educated" (brainwashed) away from public scrutiny, through torture and abuse. Sometimes they are even killed. Just like Don Pizarro, the political group gathered around dictator Jiang persecutes the practitioners even more cruelly the closer the public -- represented in the opera by the minister from Seville -- gets to the facts. Just as Leonore did for her husband in the opera, so the practitioners who enjoy freedom of belief intervene and extend worldwide support to the incarcerated practitioners in China. The motive for Leonore's courageous deed is her love for her husband, a motivation that is easily understood and quickly accepted by the opera audience. Can the public, however, grasp the motivation of us practitioners?

We want people all over the world to know that the efforts of overseas practitioners for the persecuted practitioners in China come from feelings of deep compassion, and that this compassion is bigger than all of us--just like Leonore's, who stood protectively in front of Florestan and risked her life to save him. In times like these when values are crumbling, this compassion is something for which one could easily give one's life, especially if the only alternative is to live life without it. Perhaps the world will understand that this is the reason why practitioners from China and abroad repeatedly return to Tiananmen Square to secure the freedom of those practitioners in China who are incarcerated and are being tortured. This compassion is like a "perpetual mobile," a self-generating energy source, a continuum, which allows us to endure all manner of difficulties. That is why we practitioners outside of China will never stop our appeals, not until our fellow Chinese practitioners have been set free. The end result has already been established, for just as compassion rescued and freed Florestan, so will it also lead the persecuted practitioners to freedom.

I wish that in front of every theatre showing the opera Fidelio there would be practitioners distributing this information and truth-clarifying materials about Falun Gong. Fidelio is not only an opera for a theatre stage performance; it has become reality on the stage of life in China.

The opera addresses ideals. Those ideals have become reality through the efforts of Falun Gong practitioners. Like Florestan, everyone can help to unmask the evil, reveal the truth, and save lives.

Source: http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/2558.html