Opera review: Much to enjoy in a celebratory production of Don Pasquale
Leanne Fitzgerald and Kelli-Ann Masterson in INO's Don Pasquale. Picture: Pat Redmond
★★★★☆
This year has been a string of hits for Irish National Opera, including stagings of repertory stalwarts like Tosca and Carmen, a revival of Bajazet, a revelatory Maria Stuarda and, to top it all, an outstanding, full-blast William Tell.
It’s fitting then that this Don Pasquale has such a celebratory feel to it: it’s that time of year, after all, and the company has a lot to celebrate.
Donizetti’s comic story of love, cruelty, conceit and age is transported to the modern day in director Orpha Phelan’s canny staging, designed by Nicky Shaw. Here, Dr Malatesta is a successful cosmetic surgeon, turning ugly ducklings into swans as the overture plays. His next patient is the titular Don, played with much puffed-up bluster by bass Graeme Danby.
The ageing Don has his eye on posterity, and, childless, wants his nephew Ernesto (given a dignified portrayal by tenor Patrick Kagongo) to marry as he sees fit. Ernesto, however, pines for the poor widow Norina (Kelli-Ann Masterson, whose talent for physical comedy is as clear as her dexterous singing) and so is disinherited by the callous Don, evidently inspired by the boxes of Viagra filling the stage to perhaps create an heir of his own. Better yet, Malatesta has a wife for him: his “sister” Sofronia. Of course, Sofronia is Norina in disguise and thus, the plan emerges to doop the old fool, and teach him to act his age.
Despite his coldheartedness toward Ernesto, Danby’s incarnation of Don Pasquale retains our sympathy throughout. This is perhaps key to the palatability of this update. Why should the Viagra-chugging Don not be allowed to feel frisky in old age, after all?
If the plot spells out clearly just why, culminating even in an aria with this specific intention (“La morale in tutto questo”), this production pulls the other way with its own final message, spelled out on a row of those cardboard boxes: “Love belongs to the young at heart”. Those crucial last two words might contradict the spirit of the libretto, but the balance works, softening what can seem a cruel edge to this comedy.
Ben McAteer was a mute Dr Malatesta on the night: struck down with a throat illness, he acted the role as Giorgio Caoduro sung it from the fringes. It detracted a little from the comic potential of some of his and Danby’s skittering, fast-paced parlando duetting, but otherwise was carried off well. The Irish National Opera Orchestra, meanwhile, under Teresa Riveiro Bohm, was as bright, effervescent and quintessentially Italian as an Aperol spritz.
- Don Pasquale tours to Bray, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Tralee in February. See irishnationalopera.ie for dates
