About the work
„Leonora, ossia L'amore coniugale" is an opera by Ferdinando Paër, premiered in Dresden in 1804. It is based on the same libretto by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly — about the faithful wife who rescues her husband — that Ludwig van Beethoven would set a year later as his „Fidelio". Paër's work is thus a fascinating sister piece to the most famous rescue opera in the history of music. (Note: in the database the work is listed as a ballet — it is in fact an opera.)
Plot
The nobleman Florestano is unlawfully held captive by his adversary, the prison governor Don Pizzaro, out of personal hatred, and left to starve in secret. His wife Leonora will not give up: disguised as a young man called „Fedele", she takes service with the jailer Rocco in order to penetrate the dungeon and free her husband. Step by step she wins Rocco's trust and approaches the secret cell. At the decisive moment, when Pizzaro means to do away with the prisoner, Leonora throws herself protectively between them and reveals herself as the faithful wife. With the arrival of the rescuing authorities the tyrant is overthrown, and conjugal love triumphs over injustice and violence.
Cultural significance
Paër's „Leonora" was written at the height of the vogue for rescue opera in the Napoleonic era and stands in the shadow of Beethoven's „Fidelio", which set the same subject just a year later. It is precisely this circumstance that makes the work historically intriguing: it shows how different composers shaped the same story of fidelity and liberation. In recent times Paër's opera has been revived at festivals and in rediscovery productions.