Don Pasquale

When an old confirmed bachelor marries, the fun really starts. Actually, the wedding is only an excuse to spoil the inheritance of nephew Ernesto. But Don Pasquale's doctor, Dr. Malatesta, is stupidly on Ernesto's side and brings in his niece Norina, as the fake bride who well and truly makes life hell for the grumbling uncle!

"Yesterday evening, I staged Don Pasquale. The result was very favourable. The adagio in the finale of the second act was repeated. The stretto of the duet between Lablache [Pasquale] and Grisi [Norina] was repeated. I was called forward at the end of the second and third acts. There was not an item, from the sinfonia onwards, that was not applauded to some degree. I am satisfied." This is what Gaetano Donizetti wrote in a letter to his student Matteo Salvi on 4 January 1843, one day after the first performance of his »Don Pasquale«. He had composed the opera in barely eleven days as a commission for the Théâtre Italien in Paris to a libretto written in collaboration with Giovanni Ruffini which was based in turn on a draft by Angelo Anelli. And Donizetti was definitely entitled to be satisfied with the opera: the audience immediately fell in love with the music, which ranged from the broadly comic style of the commedia dell’arte to the most beautifully lyrical moments, and had fun with the well-known story of the grouchy old man who is mercilessly given the run-around by a young woman – a traditional theme in art and literature since the Renaissance. The humorous opera soon spread across the stages of the world.

Guest Performances