Rossini: L'Equivoco Stravagante (The Curious Misunderstanding).(Sound Recording Review)

[] P. Petrova; Schmunck, Vinco, di Felice; Czech Chamber Soloists and Chorus, Zedda. Text. Naxos 8.660087-88

It didn't take long for Rossini to find his voice. Verdi stumbled through Oberto and Un Giorno di Regno before hitting his stride in Nabucco; Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi only hint at the Wagner who would emerge in Der Fliegende Hollander. But in L'Equivoco Stravagante, his first evening-length opera buffa, Rossini emerges full-grown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. The opera is unmistakably the work of the composer of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

The reasons for L'Equivoco Stravagante's relative obscurity are extra-musical. Its ribald libretto caused the Bologna censors to close it down after three performances of its 1811 premiere run. Rossini ran-sacked the score for numbers in later operas, leaving L'Equivoco Stravagante to languish for a century and a half. A corrupt edition came out in 1965. The Deutsche Rossini Gesellschaft recently prepared a cleaned-up score that served as the basis for the current performance, caught live at the 2000 Rossini in Wild-bad festival. This is the opera's first commercial recording.

As in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the elaborate plot of L'Equivoco Stravagante unites tenor hero with mezzo heroine through the machinations of a scheming servant. Ernestina is the daughter of the nouveau riche Gamberotto, who has arranged for her to marry the rich, fatuous Buralicchio. Ermanno, her impoverished suitor, enlists the servant Frontino to help his cause. Frontino devises the curious misunderstanding of the work's title: he tells Buralicchio that Ernestina is actually a castrato in disguise--a plot development that, even two centuries later, seems decidedly risque. ...