To this day, the two major Fidelio overtures are still performed from music texts that go back to the imprecise and corrupted first editions of the parts. In the meantime, however, the state of the sources for both works has significantly improved through many new findings.

For his new edition of the "Leonore" Overture, which is still wrongly labelled as "No. 3" to this day, Christian Rudolf Riedel based himself for the first time on the Prague copy of the score that was rediscovered in 1977. This score was most likely used by the conductor in 1806, and it helps clear up the previously unresolved textual problems of the work, such as, for example, the famous Presto passage in m. 514.