Olga Peretyatko / Рецензии

How cruel these old comedies are! Don Pasquale, close to the end of Donizetti’s astonishing and tragically truncated career – this was his 64th opera; only two more were to come – is sometimes spoken of as being rather more nuanced than other examples of the genre. But at core it is the quintessential commedia dell’arte story of young love triumphing over authority in the shape of an old man. Or, to put it another way, it presents, for our approval, the spectacle of an old man being punished for attempting to foil the desires of the young.