Overture (Il signor Bruschino)

The last of the five one-act farces Rossini wrote for the Teatro San Moisè in Venice, Il signor Bruschino was first given there on 27 January 1813, when the composer was twenty. Giuseppe Foppa's libretto came from a French comedy about a young man passed off as another man's son. The overture is remembered for a joke: the second violins tap their bows on the metal shades of their music stands, a rhythmic knocking that reportedly irritated the first audience. Within ten days Rossini had moved from this scale to Tancredi at La Fenice.