Wexford Festival Opera 2026: L’equivoco stravagante
Gurgen Baveyan, Maria Barakova and Stefan Astakhov in L’equivoco stravagante. Image, Padraig Grant
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As part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, Wexford Festival Opera invited the public to vote for one opera they’d like to see staged as part of this year’s festival. Their choice, surprising to some, was L’equivoco stravagante. An 1811 dramma giocoso by Gioachino Rossini, with libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri. Rossini’s first large-scale opera written when he was only 19. A lightweight comedy about a scholarly, schoolmarmish woman torn between her ill-suited suitor and her poverty-stricken tutor. A study of nineteenth-century societal norms which sees director Max Hoehn prove a safe pair of hands. The result as likely to evoke ‘job well done’ as ‘be careful what you wish for’. Energised and enjoyable, the production’s adherence to a risk-avoidance conventionality confirms that without real risk, there’s little real reward. Meaning, for some, Hoehn’s traditional approach is exactly what’s needed. For others, it’s nowhere near enough.
Maria Barakova in L’equivoco stravagante. Image, Padraig Grant
As conventional goes, L’equivoco stravagante is top of the heap. Darko Petrovic’s recessed library, upper balcony, with painted flats of porticos, clouds and even a curious-looking mosquito suggest Italy if viewed through a Monty Python design lens. Massimo Carlotto’s superb period costumes perfectly capture formal attire, dandy flamboyance or the androgynous nature of the scholarly Ernestina. Mezzo-soprano Maria Barakova excellent as a strong-willed woman believing herself capable of compartmentalising her desires. Forever touching her glasses, Ernestina sees no issue in marrying the dunderheaded Buralicchio to appease her social-climbing, farmer father, Gamberotto. Baritone Stefan Astakhov as the sloppy, agricultural Gamberotto, and bass Gurgen Baveyan as foppishly dandy Buralicchio producing comic joy every time they take to the stage. But fate has other plans for Ernestina, and with the help of soprano Kelli-Ann Masterson’s vibrant maid Rosalia, and tenor Carlos Natale's duplicitous servant Frontino, the ardent tutor, Ermanno, might just win the emotionless scholar’s hand. Tenor Sebastian Mach’s lovelorn Ermanno stirring within Ernestina something which might be love. The course of which never runs smooth. False letters and a supposed castrato pretending to be a woman soon lead to an unconvincing arrest, leaving several things to be resolved in an unnecessarily long ending. One that never seems to stop, like that one person in the curtain call who won’t stop taking bows, dragging on way past its best-by date.
Sebastian Mach in L’equivoco stravagante. Image, Padraig Grant
Cracking along at pace, Rossini’s score is given vibrant life by the Orchestra of Wexford Festival Opera under conductor Riccardo Bisatti, whose energised interpretation hits all the right notes. A score to be surrendered too with its long lead up before much of anything happens. The second act far more dramatically engaging. Yet even then action is punctured by long asides, like Ermanno's lamenting aria Sento da mille furie. Against which singing marries beautifully, if not always powerfully, with Mach’s sensitive tones dwarfed by Barakova’s powerful range, superb in the impassioned rondo Il periglio passò / Se per te lieta torno. The rousing chorus Andrem, vedrem, faremo pre-intermission, and the comic duet Vieni pur, a me t'accosta between Baveyan and Barakova, alone justifying L’equivoco stravagante’s revival. The latter arguably one of the best comic duets to be heard anywhere.
Maria Barakova and Gurgen Baveyan in L’equivoco stravagante. Image, Padraig Grant
Under the terms it sets out for itself, L’equivoco stravagante is a roaring success. There will be many who’ll admire how L’equivoco stravagante adheres to the conventions of Rossini’s time. Its giggling prudery at sexual innuendo and homoerotic suggestiveness ensuring the banned opera was originally edited so as to land this side of good, clean fun. For others, if its conventional staging replicates the experience, it lacks the original’s subversive spirit. In the modern context of drag, downplaying a homophobic dandy and a homoerotic finale as cartoon foppery looks both dated and an opportunity missed to interrogate deeper. Leaving L’equivoco stravagante an opera for all the family. Like a Royal Variety sketch or a Benny Hill routine, but far less risqué. Showing just the faintest hint of naughty postcard humour sure to offend no-one. Likely to be enjoyed by one and all, if unlikely to be reckoned as one of the greats.
L’equivoco stravagante by Gioachino Rossini, libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri, runa at at O’Reilly Theatre National Opera House Wexford as part of Wexford Festival Opera 2026 on 16, 21, 25, 29 Oct 2026
For more information visit Wexford Festival Opera 2026
