Fidelio was named after Beethoven’s only opera.

It is a chancery italic typeface with swashes that seems to lack a clear systematic organisation: some characters have even more swash versions and some don't have swashes at all.

Fidelio seems to have been written with a broad nibbed pen, but in reality Mendoza designed all shapes by hand.

More reading about José Mendoza y Almeida and his work can be found in the similarly named book by Martin Majoor and Sébastien Morlighem, published by Bibliothèque Typographique, 2010, ISBN 978-2-35654-008-9