Beethoven 2020 – Amor conjugale – Bonn

Bonn Beethovenfest  – World conference center – September 23rd – 8 PM

Cancelled due to covid19 crisis

The Bavarian composer Johann Simon Mayr, aka Giovanni Simone Mayr after achieving fame and glory in Italy, set Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s Leonore text as a ‘farse sentimentale’ entitled ‘L’amor coniugale’. It was premièred in Padua on 26 July 1805, nine months after Paër’s ‘Leonora’ and four months before Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’. The librettist, Gaetano Rossi, shifted the French revolutionary material to 17th-century Poland, gave the characters different names and replaced the spoken dialogue with secco recitatives. He also watered down the revolutionary liberation of the plot in favour of a private love intrigue: an unscrupulous prison warden imprisons Florestan solely to get his hands on the latter’s wife.

David Stern will conduct Opera Fuoco in this new edition of this comic opera to celebrate the Beethoven’s year.