The story of Léonore ou l’amour conjugal, conveniently transported to Spain by Nicolas Bouilly, is based on a true story that took place during the French Revolution. The heroism of a young woman disguised as a man going to save her husband, who is being held arbitrarily in the depths of a dungeon, has fired the imagination of several authors. It must be said that the situation is timeless and touches us today as much as it would have in the past.Created in 1798 in Paris at the time when the French armies were invading Rome, this "historical story in two acts, in prose mixed with songs" to the music of Pierre Gaveaux, was soon crossing the borders. The Italian composer Ferdinando Paër set it to music in 1804. We know the famous anecdote of Beethoven, who had the score to it, casually saying to the composer: "I liked your opera very much and will set it to music". Beethoven's Leonore was performed in Vienna the following year without success, before becoming Fidelio nearly ten years later. Coincidentally, the Bavarian composer Simon Mayr also took up the subject in the same year, 1805, when his Italian opera L’amor conjugale was performed in Padua.Although the story is the same, the setting is shifted—to Poland. Leonore/Fidelio become Zeliska/Malvino, Florestan is Amorveno, the other protagonists are Floreska, Peters, Moroski and Ardelao. The work has been successfully produced all over the European continent. We have to say that he skilfully blends the musical traditions of Northern and Southern Europe in a perfect union of styles between Germanic harmonic science and Italian bel canto.For this recording, David Stern and the singers and musicians of his Opera Fuoco ensemble return to their roots, particularly in the recitatives where cello and double bass are combined with the harpsichord. The whole is very lively, highlighting both the voices and the delicacy of the instrumentation. Let us welcome this new recording of an opera which represents an important link in the evolution of bel canto, which lead to further development by Rossini and his glorious successors, Donizetti and Bellini. It is undoubtedly the modernity of the subject that influenced the album's graphic designers, presented against the background of a Mondrian composition. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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