Novices and experts will savour this sexy souffle
Don Pasquale (Glyndebourne) Verdict: Perfect for starters; bliss for sophisticates ★★★★★
OPERA buffs label Donizetti’s comic opera Don Pasquale a ‘starter opera’. If that means uncomplicated, easily digested, filled with lovely melodies — and short — then so it is.
If they mean that it is bland, puréed baby food, it is not. It is a hot, passion-fruit soufflé which, when it rises, is as light as air, exquisitely combining sweetness and sharpness. But only if cooked to perfection. It appears effortless, but requires talent as well as a good recipe.
Director Mariame Clément has both in spades, for this is the sixth revival of her 2011 production. I shall take the word of my esteemed opera critic colleague that it has never been so sensationally well sung.
Her staging is spectacular. During the overture, the stage revolves while mischievous Malatesta (Huw Montague Rendall), the story’s fixer, swoops through paintings and wardrobes from one sleeping character’s room to the next, to illustrate how he will inveigle his way into their lives for his own amusement; and to force deluded old dog Don Pasquale to keep his breeches on.
For the moral of this tale, as Erin Morley’s charmingly coquettish Norina reminds us, is that ‘Marriage in old age is for fools’, prompting the evening’s biggest laugh.
But in a clever twist, having sorted Norina’s marriage to Don Pasquale’s drippy nephew Ernesto (a splendid Glyndebourne debut by Luca Bernard), Malatesta’s intimacy with Norina suggests an ongoing affair. Their shared bubble bath, as they frothily plot their next move, will not be their last.
Playfulness is the order of the day. A letter arrives in the beak of a bird, dropped from above; a superbly drilled chorus of fops, all a whiter shade of pale, provide a gossipy commentary. There’s also unexpected poignancy, best of all Ernesto’s solo to the tune of a trumpet.
Delicious.