Metropolitan Opera Preview: Don Pasquale

\The Met brings back Donizetti's comedy of love, marriage and domestic foibles.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This marriage won't go well: a scene from Don Pasquale.
Photo © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Met's last revival of Don Pasquale burned the house down. Now, a new cast led by Eleonara Buratto and tenor Javier Camarena rises from the ashes. Mega-baritone Ambrogio Maestri sings the title role.
Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale is one of the great opera comedies, and yet somehow falls just short of the gold standard of the Figaro comedies, Falstaff or its brother by this same composer L'Elisir D'Amore. The Met revives its hansome, elborate production by Otto Schenk with Ambrogio Maestri in the title role and Ms. Buratto as the scheming Norina
This is the classic story of a young suitor who is being prevented from getting married by his geriatric, randy and very single uncle. The marriage is saved by his fiancee Norina, an actress who pretends to be the Dons perfect, ideal child bride until the wedding, where she turns into a spend-thrift domineering shrew. This story is so pupular that it was used for a number of operas (including Richard Strauss' Die Schweigsame Frau) but in the end it is Don Pasquale that has endured.
Don Pasquale returns to the Met On March 4, 2016.