Rossini wrote 'L'equivoco stravagante' ('The Curious Misunderstanding'), his first full-length opera, full of buffo humour, melodious and musically buoyant, when he was only 19 years old. The plot of this dramma giocoso offers a panoply of absurdist stagecraft with one character being led to believe that the work's heroine is in fact a castrato trying to avoid military service.
