L'inganno Felice

One of a series of one-act comic operas that Rossini composed for Venice early in his career, L'inganno Felice (The Happy Deception) features a libretto that hardly seems funny: Isabella, the faithful wife of Duke Bertrando, was cast adrift to die by the villainous Ormondo, whose advances she rejected, but rescued from the deep by Tarabotto, a miner who—in order to protect her—passed her off as his niece Nina. Ten years later, Bertrando visits the region, and despite the efforts of Ormondo and his henchman Batone to abduct Isabella, she is happily reunited with her husband. Despite the dark underpinnings, the composer's typically bubbly music dominates, and is well performed in this production filmed at the 2015 Bad Wildbad Rossini Festival in southwestern Germany. The orchestral work by the Virtuosi Brunensis (a chamber ensemble composed of musicians from the Czech city of Brno) sparkles under the baton of Antonino Fogliani, and the singing by Artavazd Sargsyan (Bertrando), Silvia Dalla Benetta (Isabella), Lorenzo Regazzo (Tarabotto), Baurzhan Anderzhanov (Ormondo), and Tiziano Bracci (Batone) meets the score's demands. Visually, this is less impressive: the set is nondescript, and the costumes—which suggest the 1940s—are equally bland. Moreover, the resonant acoustic of the Königliches Kurtheater is kinder to the orchestra than the voices. Even so, this rather sprightly performance of a Rossini rarity—presented in PCM stereo—is recommended, overall. (F. Swietek)