[Financial Times, 27 October 2008]

Make love, not war. The slogan had not been coined when Rossini wrote Matilde di Shabran for Rome in 1821, but it is surely what he meant when he subtitled his opera Bellezza, e cuor di ferro. What the brilliant young composer was saying between the lines of his melodramma giocoso was that the only war of significance is the battle of the sexes - and it’s one that every man is predestined to lose.