Stefano Pavesi’s work was swept away by the Rossini operatic avalanche and he is now almost forgotten, but while his vibrantly entertaining (though not without a touch of melancholy) melodramma giocoso Ser Marcantonio has many Rossinian features the young Gioachino’s operatic career was yet to begin when it was first staged. The libretto sets up a typical late eighteenth-century opera buffa plot full of intrigue, buffoonery, disguises and cases of mistaken identity, which may be summarised as “about preventing an old fool from making an ill-advised marriage and stopping his heir from gaining his rightful inheritance”.