Overture: Il Signor Bruschino

Although the one-act farce Il Signor Bruschino has had many successful revivals since it flopped on its first performance in Venice in 1813, it still not one of the Rossini favourites - like The Barber of Seville, say, or La Cenerentola or The Italian Girl in Algiers. That is partly because it is so short that it does not fill an evening and needs to be paired off with another short opera. And double bills are not what most audiences want to see and most opera companies want to do. So, in spite of the entertainingly comic treatment of old Bruschino, his feckless son and the enterprising young man who pretends to be his son, the opera itself has achieved nothing like the popularity of its overture - which has one particularly striking feature about it. A gruff gesture on the lower strings in the opening bars is met first by a pretty answer from the violins and then, when that fails to do the trick and the gruff gesture is repeated, by the surprising sound of the second violins tapping their bows on their music stands. Too good an idea not to be repeated, it is heard several times over in a short but eventful piece including some characteristically tuneful thematic ideas and an early example of the Rossini crescendo.

Rupert Avis 2006