Opera dominated nineteenth-century Italy, but that simplistic understanding is complicated when considering the contemporaneous reception of Beethoven. Italians knew and performed his instrumental music, but Beethoven’s Italian reception differs from his status as the icon of instrumental music in northern Europe. Italian critics considered Beethoven an opera composer, which is problematic considering he wrote only one unsuccessful opera, Fidelio (1804–14), that was not fully staged in Italy until the 1880s. This Italian misreading of Beethoven can be understood in the context of the crisis of opera: at the same time the Western operatic canon was being ossified, critics lamented the static and provincial nature of the genre and were searching for new possibilities to reinvigorate Italian opera, including the influence of German instrumental music. Understanding Beethoven in Italy provides a more nuanced view of both by rethinking facile notions such as Carl Dahlhaus’s “‘twin cultures’ dichotomy.”