The plot of La cambiale di matrimonio (The Bill of Marriage), which Rossini composed when he was just eighteen years old, revolves around the farcical attempts of Tobia Mill, a rich English merchant, to combine business with pleasure by forcing his daughter, the lovely Fanny (‘merchandise’) to marry Slook, his rich colonial correspondent from America, by means of a bill of exchange. Eventually, it is the gallant Slook himself who persuades Mill to allow Fanny to marry her true love, Edoardo Milfort.