@bestofopera.en: Follow @bestofopera for the voices that refuse to be forgotten. 🎵 "Duetto buffo di due gatti" - Kiri Te Kanawa and Norma Burrowes Two cats bicker, meow, trip over each other — and that's the entire libretto. Not one word beyond "meow," start to finish. No plot to explain, no Italian to translate. Just that. For two hundred years, this duet has carried a big name: Rossini. Buy the score today, and "Gioacchino Antonio Rossini" is still printed right there, in the composer field. But on that same page, the same publisher writes that he didn't write it. What actually exists is an anonymous compilation, published in 1825, signed under a name nobody has ever cracked: G. Berthold. And still, there's real Rossini inside it. The melody comes from two scenes of his Otello, which premiered in 1816. There, those same notes were sung by two men, Rodrigo and Iago. Here, two centuries later, two sopranos sing them — and their entire libretto is meow. They're Kiri Te Kanawa and Norma Burrowes. The one still with no name to this day is the piece's true author. A fake name signs the joke. A real name has carried the blame for two centuries. And whoever actually put it all together never said who they were. Did you know you can still buy this score today with Rossini's name on the cover — and his denial on that very same page? 🎼 Piece: Duetto buffo di due gatti ("Comic duet of the two cats") ✍️ Composer: credited to Rossini — actually an anonymous compilation signed "G. Berthold" (1825); melody drawn from Rossini's Otello (1816) 🎤 Performers: Kiri Te Kanawa 🇳🇿 and Norma Burrowes 🇬🇧 🎥 Recording: "Call Me Kiri" TV special, BBC, 26 December 1982 — never released on record Follow for more voices that refuse to be forgotten. #BestOfOpera #Rossini #Opera #FunFacts

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Monday 07 September 2026 20:00:01 GMT