Recenzii de producție anterioare
3Lange war diese seine 46. Oper, das einzige Werk, das in den Spielplänen der Opernhäuser verblieb. Erst in den letzten Jahrzehnten erleben wir eine Renaissance seiner Kompositionen. Die Wiederaufnahme der in 2015 entstandenen Inszenierung wird zum würdigen Belcantofest. Der kurzfristig für Xabier Anduaga eingesprungene Juan Diego Florez zählt derzeit zu den besten Tenören seines Faches und hat das eindrucksvoll unter Beweis gestellt. Sicher und in feinsten Tönen, herrlich getragenen Melodiebögen und schwungvollen Höhen zeigt er keine Makel. Der letzte Akt ist ganz dem Leid des unselig Geliebten und Verliebten gewidmet, sodass diese Oper auch zu einer Tenoroper geworden ist und das unterstreicht der Peruaner mit einer mitreißenden berührenden Schlusszene, die zu Tränen rührt.
You sometimes hear people describe Don Pasquale as a ‘cruel’ comedy – though they’re often a bit vague as to what they mean. Pin them down and the complaint seems to be that the 70-year-old gentleman who belatedly gets married in the plot is treated cruelly. But Don Pasquale begins the opera by attempting to impose his will upon his nephew’s choice of wife, and disinheriting him when he refuses to comply; any cruelty in the opera starts there. There are undoubtedly tricky moments for director, cast and even the audience to negotiate collectively, most notoriously when during their battle of marital wills in Act III, Norina – Pasquale’s fake bride, whom he has willingly married as part of his scheme to disinherit nephew Ernesto – slaps her elderly husband’s face.
If you want escapist bliss — and who doesn’t right now? — the Royal Opera’s new staging of Donizetti’s comic opera is almost perfect. Almost, because it slightly runs out of steam just before the end. By then, however, I had been richly entertained by Damiano Michieletto’s clever modern-day staging, dazzled by mostly brilliant singing and the scintillating playing of the orchestra under Evelino Pido’s seasoned direction and touched by the acting of a top-notch cast. The latter is most surprising because I thought myself impervious to the “fun” of an opera in which an old man who craves a pretty wife is tricked, bullied and humiliated. Yet his treatment doesn’t feel cruel here. In part that’s because Olga Peretyatko, as the marriage-brokered bride
