Hearts on the move: Rossini’s “Opportunity Makes Thieves” in Munich
Everyone has to decide for themselves whether love really tastes like apricot dumplings with cinnamon and sugar, as it is claimed here, it is definitely sweet. In Rossini’s day, however, viewers could die by hearsay, because back then, in the early 19th century, hardly anyone married out of love. That is why the sentence, go where your heart takes you, would not have been kitsch then, as it is today, but a silly provocation. Nobody of class and wealth could afford to follow his heart – it was only the romantics who made dying a fashion, in pain, as we know, that was the only thing that made dying romantics a fashion.
Rossini didn’t have time to take a pulse
In this respect, there is a lot of heart and soul in this 90-minute short Rossini farce with the strange title “Opportunity makes thieves” (“L’occasione fa il ladro”, 1812) in the figurative sense, and it is perfectly fine that the designer Elisabeth Vogetseder has the heart in small and large on the scenic stars. It even does boom, boom, boom and spray gold confetti when it gets cocky. Rossini himself probably didn’t have time to feel his pulse in between – he set the piece to music in just eleven days. The man was busy at the time.