 Operas with this kind of subject matter became popular in France around the time of the French Revolution; a number of such operas dealt with the rescue of a political prisoner.Stylistically and thematically, rescue opera was an outgrowth of the French bourgeois "opéra comique"; musically, it began a new tradition that would influence German Romantic opera and French grand opera.The most famous rescue opera is Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fidelio".