Burletta per musica in one act
Music by Giochino Rossini
Libretto by Luigi Prividali
In Italian with German and English surtitles

Premiere: September 23, 2025

Wiener KammerOrchester
Musical direction: Pedro Beriso
Staging: Marcos Darbyshire

Opportunity makes a thief: During a storm, Count Alberto loses his suitcase. It is found by Don Parmenione who, discovering a portrait of Alberto’s fiancée Berenice inside, sees an opportunity. He slips into the count’s clothes and sets off to visit Berenice who, at this point, has not yet seen her fiancé. What Parmenione doesn’t know is that Berenice has decided to watch her intended from a safe distance at first, and to this end she and her friend Ernestina have changed places. While Parmenione is wooing the woman he thinks is Berenice, the real Alberto arrives. Initially shocked to find he suddenly has a rival, he is soon charmed by the woman pretending to be his fiancée’s friend. And so the deception ends up leading to true love after all. Gioachino Rossini composed the one-act opera L’occasione fa il ladro (Opportunity Makes a Thief) in 1812, and it already contains everything that characterises his later works: barnstorming ensembles, moving and virtuoso arias, comical instrumental effects and the composer’s first storm music. But behind the turbulent plot of L’occasione fa il ladro lie questions of identity theft, social role-playing and the universally human quest to find oneself. Marcos Darbyshire, who already demonstrated a flair for comic opera with Don Pasquale at the Kammeroper in 2017, will direct this comedy of fourfold mistaken identities.

CAMPUS-Cooperation with sutdents from Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien (Petra Radulovic und Lazar Parežanin) and Universität Mozarteum Salzburg (Ilyà Dovnar)