L'amor coniugale is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in one act by Simon Mayr

Simon Mayr

Johann Simon Mayr , also known in Italian as Giovanni Simone Mayr or Simone Mayr was a German composer.- Life :...

 set to an Italian libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Gaetano Rossi

Gaetano Rossi

Gaetano Rossi was an Italian writer who wrote opera libretti for several composers including Mayr, Rossini, Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, and Meyerbeer.-Biography:...

. It premiered at Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

's Teatro Nuovo on 26 July 1805.

Background and performance history

Like Beethoven's Fidelio

Fidelio

Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...

, the libretto of L'amor coniugale is based on Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly was a French playwright, librettist, children's writer, and politician of the French Revolution...

's French libretto for Pierre Gaveaux

Pierre Gaveaux

Pierre Gaveaux was a French operatic tenor and composer, notable for creating the role of Jason in Cherubini's Médée and for composing the first operatic version of the story that later found fame as Fidelio....

's 1798 opera Léonore ou L'amour conjugal. Unlike Fidelio which focuses on the struggle for political liberty, Mayr's opera, also known as Il custode di buon cuore (The Good-hearted Jailer) and described in its libretto as a farsa sentimentale, focuses more on the interpersonal relationships between the protagonists and contains comic elements. Rossi condensed Bouilly's two-act libretto into one act containing 19 scenes and changed the setting from the Napoleonic wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 to 17th century Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

.

L'amor coniugale premiered at the Teatro Nuovo in Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

 on 26 July 1805 in a double bill with the premiere of Pietro Carlo Guglielmi's La donna di spirito. It was then performed the following September at the Teatro San Benedetto

Teatro San Benedetto

The Teatro San Benedetto was a theatre in Venice, particularly prominent in the operatic life of the city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It saw the premieres of over 140 operas, including Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, and was the theatre of choice for the presentation of opera seria until...

 in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

. Although rarely performed now, it was revived at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo

Bergamo

Bergamo is a town and comune in Lombardy, Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The comune is home to over 120,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent the metropolitan area of Milan...

 in November 1984 conducted by Bruno Moretti

Bruno Moretti

M. Bruno Moretti is an Italian composer of ballet music working in collaboration with the choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti. He is also a singer and accompanist, having graduated from Rome's Accademia di Santa Cecilia. He studied with Nino Rota and became his assistant, later studying conducting at...

 and in Wildbad at the 2004 Rossini in Wildbad Festival. The Wildbad performance used a revised score by Arrigo Gazzaniga.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast 26 July 1805
Zeliska, in disguise, Malvino	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Margherita Chabrand
Amorveno, Zeliska's imprisoned husband	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Saverio Monelli
Peters, the jailer	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Carlo Angrisani
Floreska, Peters' daughter	soprano	Clementina Veglia
Moroski, the governor	bass	Natale Veglia
Ardelao, Amorveno's brother	tenor	Carlo Merusi

Recordings

• Mayr: L'amor coniugale – live recording from the 2004 Rossini festival in Wildbad, Germany
  Bad Wildbad
  Bad Wildbad is a town in Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located in the government district of Karlsruhe and in the district of Calw. Its coordinates are 48° 45' N, 8° 33' E. About 11,250 people live there...
  
  , with Christopher Franklin conducting the Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra. Label: Naxos Records
  Naxos Records
  Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...
  
   8660198

Sources

• Casaglia, Gherardo, "(Giovanni Simone) Mayr", Almanacco Amadeus, 2005. Accessed 8 November 2009 (in Italian).
• Lindner, Thomas, Liner Notes: L'amor coniugale (English version by Neil Coleman), Naxos Records
  Naxos Records
  Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...
  
  8660198.

External links

• Gaetano Rossi's libretto for L'amor coniugale
• Jean Nicolas Bouilly's libretto for Léonore, ou l'amour conjugal (on which L'amor coniugale is based)