About the work
L'equivoco stravagante is a dramma giocoso (opera buffa) in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri, first performed on 26 October 1811 at the Teatro del Corso in Bologna. It was Rossini's first publicly commissioned full-length opera, written when the composer was just nineteen.
Plot
The wealthy farmer's daughter Ernestina, her head turned by novels about literary heroines, spurns her rich but foolish suitor Buralicchio in favour of her poor tutor Ermanno. To thwart the unwanted match, Ermanno and a servant spread the rumour that Ernestina is in fact a deserter disguised as a woman — a "bizarre misunderstanding" that throws the household into chaos before Ermanno and Ernestina are finally united.
Cultural significance
The censors banned the work after only three performances, objecting to its ambiguous situations, its mockery of the wealthy and the military, and its allusions to castrati. The opera then largely disappeared until its 1965 rediscovery in Siena and its subsequent regular revivals at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.