Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Rossini: L'Equivoco Stravagante

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Only in the past couple of decades have all of Gioacchino Rossini's 38 operas finally appeared on disc in definitive recordings. The two act farce L'Equivoco Stravagante ("The Bizarre Deception", 1811) is Rossini's second opera, and surely the least known of all the works in his operatic canon. The one and only production of this work in Bologna was a fiasco. The city fathers suppressed it after three performances because of its objectionable libretto. Among the intricacies of the plot, the heroine is passed off as a eunuch in drag! That is the "bizarre deception" of the title.

The music of L'Equivoco Stravagante is Rossini at his light-hearted buffa best, beautifully orchestrated and bubbling with lovely melody. The music may well sound familiar to Rossini aficionados. Rossini mined the score of this unsuccessful opera buffa in writing many of his later, better known operas.

This Rossini rarity came out on two CD's under the Naxos label in 2002 during the Rossini in Wildbad Festival, Bad Wildbad in Germany. Alberto Zedda conducted the Czech Chamber Chorus and Czech Chamber Soloists orchestra with a six member cast of solo singers. Those Naxos CDs were last broadcast on Sunday, August 10, 2003. Prior to that date I broadcast the only other available recording of the lyric farce, the one issued on CDs under the Italian Bongiovanni, which was actually a reissue of a 1974 LP recording. That was on Sunday, July 23, 2000. You get to hear the Naxos release again today.