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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) melodrama giocoso Ser Marcantonio has many Rossini an 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 buff a plot full of intrigue, buffoonery, disguises and cases of mistaken identity, which may be summarized as "about preventing an old fool from making an ill-advised marriage and stopping his heir from gaining his rightful inheritance".