Performer: Ensemble Matheus

Cecilia Bartoli is joined by frequent collaborators Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier in a fun-filled Rossini farce full of Italian sunshine. Big grins all round. 

Verdi’s Otello opens with a fierce storm raging over Cyprus. In Rossini’s version, composed 71 years earlier in 1816, the composer eschewed the Cypriot setting entirely and the storm doesn’t take place until Act III, although last night a mighty crack of thunder resounded over the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées as the audience filed into the opera house.