Costume design by Leslie Hurry for chorus members Cecil Lloyd and Charles Draper as Prisoners in a version of Beethoven's Fidelio by Edward J. Dent and John Arden, Sadler's Wells, 1965.

Leslie Hurry (1909-1978) trained at the Royal Academy and during the 1930s became known as a surrealist painter. A one-man show in London in 1942 was seen by the theatre director, Michael Benthall, who recommended Hurry to the dancer and choreographer, Robert Helpmann, then planning a ballet based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The success of his designs set Hurry on a second career as one of the most distinguished theatre designers of his generation. He designed operas, ballets and plays, notably Swan Lake for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1943, a production which stayed in the repertoire for thirty years; Venice Preserv'd for Peter Brook (1953); the Ring Cycle at Covent Garden (1954), and Troilus and Cressida at Stratford for Peter Hall (1960), famous for being staged in a sand pit.

Sadler’s Wells Opera’s production of Fidelio, an opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven with a libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner in an English version by Edward J. Dent with new dialogue by John Arden, was first performed at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, on 7 September 1965 and opened at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, on 16 September 1965. It was produced by John Blatchley.

The costumes for Fidelio were described in The Times as’ coarse and rather seedy’.