By Francis Carlin [Financial Times, 19 January 2007]

Stendhal loved it. Some see it as Rossini’s first great work but The Touchstone (1812) is more a harbinger of greater things to come than an accomplished work. Like Cenerentola it presents two bad girls vying with a goodie, here the disinterested Clarice, and both operas get their business done in the first act, leaving the second as an epilogue. Played straight it would take the best singers around to keep our attention.