Rossini’s ‘rescue opera’ L’inganno felice (The Happy Deception) won immediate contemporary popularity after its first performance in 1812. One of the composer’s most inventive and sparkling scores, with soprano, tenor and bass arias of great beauty, it is today by far the least well-known and least often performed of his five farse written for Venice. The drama concerns the attempt of Isabella, wrongly rejected by her husband the Duke, and her protector, the miner Tarabotto, who had rescued her, half dead, from the sea, to bring to justice the Duke’s villainous confidant Ormondo and his henchman Batone, and to reconcile Isabella with her husband, an end happily achieved, the guilty punished and the innocent triumphant.