While filled with Rossini’s distinctive musical hallmarks and notable for some wonderfull duets, Sigismondo was one of his very few failures in the genre, for which blame is usually laid at the feet of librettist Giuseppe Foppa. Today, however, we can appreciate how this tale of an abused wife who retains her love for her deranged husband pushes the boundaries of the grand narrative tradition into a more searching psychological drama. An emphasis on madness and guilt and coloratura expressions of inner feeling results in a fascinating meeting of convention with experiment, Rossini’s subsequent re-use of his music for Sigismondo in later hit operas being ample evidence of its intrinsic quality.