Carlo Lepore (Gaudenzio); Maria Aleida (Sofia); Roberto De Candia (Bruschino padre); Francisco Brito (Bruschino figlio / Commissario); David Alegret (Florville); Andrea Vincenzo Bonsignore (Filiberto); Chiara Amarù (Marianna)

Rossini’s one-act opera Il Signor Bruschino was premiered at the Teatro di San Moisè in Venice in 1813. The chilly reception it was given – it was performed only once – is difficult to understand today, considering its bubbly, exhilarating music. As performed at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, the work is a gem, and the New York Times cheered the “clever production” conceived by the young Florentine theater collective Teatro Sotteraneo, one of the most innovative experimental groups in Italy. The action takes place in a 21st-century Rossini theme park, a kind of Rossinian Disneyland with souvenir stands and the like. With its continuous alternation between 1813 and the present, it echoes the alternation of real lover and fake suitor in the libretto. The plot, which anticipates Donizetti’s Don Pasquale by about thirty years, is a fireworks of mistaken identities, in which a young man wants to marry his beloved, but has to disguise himself as her legitimate suitor in order to trick her scheming guardian.

The music of this early Rossini opera – he was only 20 years old when he wrote it – features many intricate ensemble pieces, as well as verbal puns and gags, a hint of things to come. The Orchestra Sinfonica G. Rossini under Daniele Rustioni provides the spirited backdrop for the young singers Maria Aleida and David Alegret in the lead roles. This production from the Rossini Opera Festival is based on a new edition of the work by the Rossini Foundation, and is a new addition to the roster of unknown or little-known works produced by the world’s only regular festival devoted solely to Rossini.