A daring wife disguises herself to be hired as a jailer in a prison and to rescue her husband, unjustly detained: the story of Léonore, taken from the French novel by Jean Nicolas Bouilly, is well known to us thanks to Beethoven's only opera. But it also inspired Giovanni Simone Mayr, a German-born composer living and teaching in Bergamo, a craftsman of Italian bel canto and teacher of a certain Gaetano Donizetti. Created in 1805 in Padua, L'Amor Conjugale met with great success there and will be revived many times. While Mayr places love at the center of the story, it also permeates the score, a skillful blend of an orchestra inherited from Mozart and Haydn and a vocal writing of Italian tradition. This sacred union is what makes this music so interesting, which David Stern and his Opera Fuoco rediscover in a complete and critical version, making this recording one of the most valuable for the lyrical repertoire of the 19th century.