L'italiana in Algeri

Rossini was twenty-one and wrote the opera in under a month for the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, where it opened on 22 May 1813. The libretto by Angelo Anelli had already been set by Luigi Mosca four years earlier. Stendhal described the result as organised and complete madness, and the first-act finale — in which the characters give up on words altogether and imitate bells, cannon and crows — is the piece's calling card. It was Rossini's first great success outside the one-act farce, and it made his name beyond Italy.