Skillful, if forgettable, staging of ‘Pasquale’
The production of “Don Pasquale” that opened at the San Francisco Opera on Wednesday, Sept. 28, has everything going for it that you could possibly ask. It boasts a splendid and theatrically agile cast, an imaginative stage production by director Laurent Pelly, and nimble musical leadership from the company’s former resident conductor Giuseppe Finzi.
Yet to truly love this new offering — to surrender wholly to its ambiguous allure —requires a greater degree of
indulgence toward Donizetti’s comic arabesque than some of us, at least, can muster.
“Don Pasquale,” which has not been mounted on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House in an astonishing 32 years, is a work of simplicity and charm, but also slender invention. Even in an incarnation this skillfully handled, the piece passes by without making much of a dent in the listener’s consciousness; it has the ingratiating disposability of a well-made sitcom.
Writing near the end of his career, Donizetti took on one of the most venerable dramatic premises in Italian comic opera, and fitted it out with music that burbles along with engaging directness. The rich, foolish old man set on marrying a wife too young and clever for him is a figure that goes far back, but modern audiences are apt to know him best from “The Barber of Seville,” where he is embodied by Rossini’s far more inventive musical language, and also serves as just one dramatic strand among several.
Don Pasquale, though, is pretty much the whole show — a doddering old man who must be taught that marriage is not appropriate for his time of life. The elaborate prank devised by his nephew Ernesto, Ernesto’s beloved Norina, and their friend Dr. Malatesta, takes up the opera’s entire three acts and hovers on the border between puckishness and cruelty.
Pelly’s production, which takes its design cue from Italian screen comedies of the 1950s and ’60s (with one gratuitous but entertaining nod in the direction of “Pulp Fiction”), underscores that note of cruelty to somewhat uncertain ends. Norina, whose brief marriage to Pasquale is a fierce (and presumably educational) riot of domineering and overspending, emerges here as less a resourceful minx than a hellcat and a sloppy drunk; Ernesto is a feckless layabout.
The effect is to make these two seem like a perfect match, I suppose, but also to inject a sour note into the comic proceedings, which otherwise go off pretty much without a hitch. Pelly provides enough stage business to keep the story on the rails, and Chantal Thomas’ sets capture the emotional tenor of the narrative perfectly — including a wondrous coup in Act 3, far too witty to spoil here, to convey the extent to which Norina manages to upend Pasquale’s bachelor existence.
“Pasquale” marks the Opera debut of tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who has made an increasingly stellar name for himself in the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini. His Ernesto was a performance of radiance and beauty, marked by limpid tone and elegant phrasing — never more so than in the garden serenade that begins the opera’s last scene.
But if Brownlee’s longawaited arrival at the War Memorial was the headline news, his contribution was only a first among equals in a cast of superb singing actors. In the title role, bassbaritone Maurizio Muraro proved himself a virtuosic master of both vocal energy and comic timing, in a performance that blended tonal robustness and the requisite touch of pathos.
Soprano Heidi Stober’s Norina was at once ferocious and oddly sympathetic, particularly in the sweetly turned phrases of her final love duet with Ernesto. As Malatesta, baritone Lucas Meacham was a commanding presence, vocally forceful throughout his range and matching Muraro for fleetness of both foot and tongue (their Act 3 duet was a formidable showcase of rapidfire double patter).
Donizetti gives the chorus just one moment in the spotlight, and Ian Robertson’s Opera Chorus embraced it with clarity and vigor. Finzi elicited ebullient, fine-grained playing from the Opera Orchestra.
And yet, and yet ... “Don Pasquale” remains a tough nut for some of us — its charms not quite enticing enough, its depths not ultimately very rewarding. For everyone else, the Opera’s production may be just the ticket.