On a date that meant so much to me personally as the colony’s last governor, and much more to the citizens of Hong Kong, I attended a magnificent production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” on the grounds of a country house near Oxford. Beethoven’s only opera, written in 1805 (the year of Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz) and rewritten in 1814 (when Napoleon abdicated), is one of the supreme cultural expressions of fundamental human values – freedom and opposition to tyranny – that resonate in every society.