Want a wonderful antidote to the mid-March winter blahs? Take a trip to sunny 19th-century Italy via the Metropolitan Opera’s sparkling production of Don Pasquale. One of Gaetano Donizetti’s most popular operas, this comic treasure is steeped in the Italian commedia dell’arte tradition, using popular characters such as Pantalone, the rich old bachelor ripe for deception (Don Pasquale), Pierrot, the lover (Ernesto), Scapino, a wheeler dealer (Dr. Malatesta), Columbina, the shrewd saucy soubrette (Norina) plus a familiar scenario.
Ernesto is in love with the poor young widow Norina. Don Pasquale has decided to get married himself in order to produce an heir and consequently disinherit his nephew, Ernesto. Dr. Malatesta is enlisted to help find a young, docile bride who will bear Don Pasquale many children; but the doctor has other ideas and devises a scheme to allow Norina and Ernesto to be together and avoid living in poverty. Impersonation, lust, betrayal, romance, plus lots of slapstick are all part of the telling of Don Pasquale; what makes it more than just a rehashing of an old storyline is the combination of Donizetti’s brilliant bel canto arias, hilarious ensemble numbers and a libretto by the composer and Giovanni Ruffini that incorporates compassion, fleshed out characters and a happy ending for all.
Crafted with heart and brio by the great Austrian actor, theater and opera director Otto Schenk, still going strong at 85, this Don Pasquale was his 2006 farewell production at the Met. Maurizio Benini conducts with passion, weaving in beautiful moments of rubato. Set and costume designer Rolf Langenfass creates lavish environments for lots of zany action, including Don Pasquale’s bachelor mansion complete with a curving staircase and a tatty four poster bed, Norina’s rooftop open air porch overlooking the city of Rome and a marvelous garden for the lovers to meet.
The role of Don Pasquale is played to perfection by Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri. With a rich, resonant voice, superb comic chops, and a bold physicality including fluttering fingers, Mr. Maestri creates a three-dimensional character that makes us roar with laughter and also touches our hearts. Making her Met debut as Norina, Italian soprano Eleonora Buratto is sassy and sexy, and her facile coloratura flies brightly through Donizetti’s virtuoso passages, especially in her opening aria “I too know your magical virtues”. She also possesses natural comedic timing and her transformation from being a veiled, obedient young woman just out of the convent to tyrannical ruler of the Pasquale household is delightful and terrifying. With his astonishing effortless tenor voice, Javier Camarena is a charming and earnest Ernesto, breaking our hearts in Act I singing “Fate has made a beggar of me” as he is cast out of his uncle’s house. Driving the plot forward as Dr. Malatesta, Levente Molnár with his burnished baritone and handsome demeanor gives a terrific high energy performance. His show stopping duet “Wait, wait, dear little wife” with Don Pasquale contains some of the fastest patter in the opera repertoire and Mr. Molnár and Mr. Maestri sing with complete clarity and a vaudevillian flair. Lessons are learned and love prevails in the final quartet “The moral of all this”; Ms. Buratto’s bubbly soprano zips through oodles of sixteenth notes admonishing that "any man has lost his senses/who would marry when he’s old/he invites what then commences/aggravation, woes untold."
Go see Don Pasquale at the Metropolitan Opera, it’s like drinking a glass or two of exquisite prosecco!
Performances of Don Pasquale continue through March 18. For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.metopera.org/
