Non temer d'un basso affetto (Maometto II)

Maometto II was Rossini's most ambitious Neapolitan opera and its coolest reception; Venice heard a revised version, Paris a French rewriting as Le siège de Corinthe. Calbo is the trouser role at its centre, written for a contralto singing a young Venetian soldier, and this aria is his defence of a woman accused of treachery — a plea that no base feeling should be suspected of her. The vocal writing is severe and long-breathed, closer to the tragedies Rossini was about to write than to the comedies behind him.