Duetto buffo di due gatti

Two sopranos quarrel, interrupt one another and compete for the last word, and the whole exchange is sung on a single syllable: miaow. The cat duet takes about three minutes, needs no set and no translation, and has served as an encore since the middle of the nineteenth century — the comedy is in the timing, and the singers are expected to act it as much as sing it.

It is not by Rossini. The duet was assembled around 1825 by the English composer Robert Lucas de Pearsall, writing under the pen name G. Berthold, who spliced together material from Rossini's Otello with a song by Weber and set the result to that one syllable. Rossini's name has stayed attached to it through two centuries of programmes and recordings, and the misattribution has become part of the piece's history; it is kept here under the name the audience will look for.