Reiner, what do you think of a recent suggestion that the piece which is described by Kinsky/Halm as the Introduction to Act II of the incidental music for Tarpeja (WoO2 b), actually is a prelude for Act III of Leonore?
Reports of the premiere mention such a piece, but Leonore as we know it now doesn't contain a prelude of what kind whatsoever.
I'm afraid I don't know either the piece in question, or the scholarly discussion which refers to it :( I'm a practitioner rather than an academic, and although I try to make it my business to "know my stuff" on operas which I am staging, I've yet to work on either FIDELIO or LEONORE, sadly. (But I am open to offers if anyone is reading this ::) ) I was dimly aware that several of the recreations of LEONORE have proceeded with slightly shaky source-material for the performance - it would not surprise me at all to find that parts of the work have fallen away or become disused.
BTW I completely agree with you about this awful practice of using Leonore III as a "curtain-raiser" for Act II of FIDELIO! It cuts the legs from under the "big moment". I think we have to look at FIDELIO as a separate work to LEONORE (despite the relationship between the two pieces), and it's a slightly more "philosophical" piece than LEONORE... at its heart is the theme "HOPE". Even when that hope seems dashed, it comes unexpectedly in the bugle-call that announces the Minister's arrival... if we hear that bugle-call before the right moment, Beethoven's carefully-wrought psychology is destroyed :(
