La cambiale di matrimonio (“Marriage by Promissory Note”) was Rossini’s first professional opera, written for Venice’s Teatro San Moisè in 1810. The story is an early attempt to make sport of the American in Europe. A Canadian merchant attempts to purchase a wife from a hard-headed Englishman whose commitment to the law of supply and demand allows him to trade his daughter, Fanny, on much the same terms as he trades his other merchandise. When she establishes that she’s not for sale, the generous-hearted backwoodsman makes out the promissory note in favour of Fanny’s penniless lover, Milfort.

The score is full of dash and pizzazz though it needs careful handling if it is not to seem heartless and lacking in charm. Given the absurdly over-reverberant sound on the 1990 Claves recording (7/91) and the lack of an English translation, there is no real competition for this newest set, made at last year’s Pesaro Festival. It is a high-spirited, high-octane rendition, rather overdriven for my taste and not especially well sung, but it puts the score across well enough. I particularly enjoyed the busily inventive keyboard and string contributions to the secco recitatives, though the booklet neglects to name the continuo players.

The recording is a closely miked affair. It tends to be hard on the voices and there is a noisy stage to boot. It wasn’t always like this. There used to be an agreeable studio recording (Delysè, 7/67 – nla) with a cast including Renato Capecchi, Rolando Panerai, Nicola Monti and the young Renata Scotto. Renato Fasano conducted I Virtuosi di Roma, a rather more urbane ensemble than Pesaro’s Bolzano players. Nowadays Fasano’s conducting might seem a trifle sedate but as Andrew Porter noted in his original review, “his whole reading is marked by an appreciation of the fact that Rossini wrote, not just high-spirited trifles, but music which rewards all the care that is brought to it”. Exactly so.