Tristania - Saturne (Bonus Track)

This is precisely the kind of libretto Zonleitner suggested to Beethoven. It was called Leonora, or Conjugal Love. The text was written by Jean-Nicola Bouillet, and the opera of the same name by the singer and composer Pierre Gavaux was staged at the Feydo Theater in Paris in 1798. Bouillie called his play "historical fact" and admitted that the plot was based on an episode from the time of the revolutionary terror of 1793, when a resident of the French city of Tours managed to save her husband from the guillotine. But in the text of Leonora all hints of topicality are removed; the action was transferred to Spain of the 17th century, and the heroes were given the conditional "spanish" names: Pizarro, Leonora, Florestan. There is no evidence of whether Beethoven knew the pretty, but by no means the ingenious music of Gavo. In any case, the opera Gavo was not staged in Vienna and was not intended to be staged.