Don PasqualeNew production

In 1843, Gaetano Donizetti was one of the most celebrated European opera composers and divided his time between Italy, Vienna and Paris. It was here that, on 3 January, his Don Pasquale was performed at the Théâtre-Italien, a Parisian outpost of Italian opera with an exceptional singing company. Donizetti recycled an old libretto written by Angelo Anelli for Stefano Pavesi, Ser Marcantonio, and had it freshened up by a Mazzinian exile, Giovanni Ruffini, but imposing so many changes on him that he was, in practice, a co-author. The libretto was later published anonymously with the initials “M. A.”, which stands for the nominee Michele Accursi, Donizetti’s Parisian factotum. The opera was an immediate success and is one of not many Donizetti titles to have always remained in the repertoire, although in editions that were often heavily tampered with and incorrect. The Donizetti Opera will present, for the first time, the new critical edition edited by Roger Parker and Gabriele Dotto.

In Don Pasquale, Donizetti reworks a very predictable and trivial comic event, already brought to the stage countless times. All the characters are very traditional: the fooled buffo, the viperous primadonna, the sighing tenor, the manoeuvrer baritone. However, Don Pasquale is not only the last masterpiece of the great Italian buffa tradition, but also the first of the new times. Woven with waltzes and galops – the music of its time – this bourgeois comedy looks ironically to the past but is permeated with Romantic lyricism: the moment when Norina slaps Pasquale is almost tragic, and the whole opera lives on a wonderful balance of laughter and tears. The Festival presents it in a staging by the Opéra de Dijon, directed by the renowned German director Amélie Niermeyer, conducted by Iván López Reynoso and featuring two stars of the international opera scene such as Roberto de Candia and Javier Camarena, supported by the young talents of Bottega Donizetti.