"A complete and organized madness": it would be difficult to find a more apt description than that of the writer Stendhal to describe this surrealist face, composed by Rossini in a matter of weeks (he claimed 18 days) and premiered in May 1813. In the madcap comedy L'Italiani in Algeri, dadaist sensibilities meet onomatopoetic Italian opera buffa in two acts brimming with frenetic rhythms—seeming to anticipate the films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton—and yet, also, with great tenderness in the arias of Isabella and her fiancé Lindoro, and with the patriotic fervor that animated Venice during the era.
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