Arts & Events

In Don Pasquale, one of Gaetano Donizetti’s last operas, the title character is a man in his 70s who foolishly decides it’s time to get married. In Merola Opera’s production of Don Pasquale, which I saw Saturday, August 8 in Cowell Theatre at Fort Mason, the title character is portrayed as a wealthy, sickly nutcase who is paranoid about the possibility of germs infecting him. Don Pasquale’s home looks for all the world like an infirmary. His lounge chair looks like a chair one might find in a hospital examination room, and his servants are all dressed in hospital white and, like the don himself, wear white face-masks to keep away germs. As a staging concept, so far so good; but under Nic Muni’s direction this production of Don Pasquale veers off in several misguided directions which lead nowhere. 

In spite of the directorial miscues, this Don Pasquale is saved by a splendid performance by New Zealand-born soprano Amina Edris, who sings the role of Norina, a young woman who, by means of a plot devised by Dr. Malatesta, is offered to Don Pasquale as his bride (in a sham ceremony) and then makes her ‘husband’ so utterly miserable that he willingly begs out of the (fake) marriage. As Norina, Amina Edris packs plenty of vocal power as well as the breath control to sustain florid coloratura passages, of which Donizetti’s delightful score offers quite a few. Musically and dramatically, Amina Edris proved a charming, strong-willed Norina. My only reservation is that, due to a decision by director Nic Muni and/or conductor Warren Jones, Amina Edris was asked to sing quite shrilly on purpose all throughout her introduction to Don Pasquale. I find that this undermines the whole purpose of the scheme to entice Don Pasquale into marrying this young woman who has allegedly just been released from a convent. I much prefer Norinas who sing sweetly and demurely before the marriage, then switch into a shrill, domineering tone after the marriage, thus emphasizing the contrast and rendering Don Pasquale all the more dumbfounded at the change in his ‘bride’s’ behavior. 

The overture, which is based on Ernesto’s third act aria and on Norina’s cavatina in the first act, was so energetically conducted by Warren Jones I had fears for his health. Had he continued to gesticulate so wildly throughout the opera, I feared he might faint from over-exertion. As the plot gets under way, Don Pasquale tells his friend Dr. Malatesta that he has decided to get married. The role of Don Pasquale was sung by bass-baritone James Ioelu, whose robust vocal power was at times offset by the buffoonish characterization that obliged him to portray Don Pasquale as a weak, sickly and foolish old codger barely able to get around.  

The role of Dr. Malatesta was sung by baritone Alex DeSocio, who acquitted himself admirably as the schemer who sets everything aright in the end. Don Pasquale’s nephew, Ernesto, was sung by Korean-born tenor Soonchan Kwon, who started out strongly but later experienced some ragged edges, especially at the top of his register. Ernesto plays a key role in the plot, for he is in love with Norina, but his uncle, Don Pasquale, refuses to approve this marriage and threatens to disinherit Ernesto if he marries Norina. The scheme devised by Dr. Malatesta entails passing off Norina as his sister Sofronia, fresh out of a convent, and setting her up as a marriage partner for the gullible Don Pasquale. Once the sham wedding ceremony has taken place, Dr. Malatesta advises Norina/Sofronia to behave so outrageously that Don Pasquale will be only too happy to find a way out of his very unhappy ‘marriage’, even to the point of approving Ernesto’s marriage to Norina.  

Where the staging of this opera is concerned, what in the world caused director Nic Muni to interpolate a spoken word dialogue between the first two scenes of Act I? This dialogue was carried out in broken, Italian-accented English mixed with some Italian, and it involved characters who have no part whatsoever in the libretto Giovanni Ruffini created for Gaetano Donizetti. A paunchy, bespectacled man seemed to be a director of sorts, and he argued with a hefty prima donna over the script she was supposed to perform. These interpolated characters then hung around in the wings watching what went on in the rest of Acts I and II. At the finale of Act II, a movie cameraman hand-cranked an old movie camera as the paunchy director signaled for him to film the action going on among Pasquale, Norina, Malatesta, and Ernesto. Why a film is shot of this one moment of the opera is never made clear; and, in fact, the entire conceit of the movie business is dropped from the rest of this Don Pasquale. However, in the opera’s penultimate scene, which takes place in a garden, another arbitrary directorial conceit occurs when Don Pasquale’s servants, who till now have worn hospital whites, suddenly wear green costumes and green face-masks, making them look like elves or garden gnomes. Director Nic Muni, for all his experience, totally missed the mark in this confused staging of Don Pasquale.  

However, Donizetti’s music is pure effervescence. Among the many beautiful numbers in Don Pasquale are Malatesta’s “Bella sicome un’ angelo” (“beautiful as an angel”) when he describes to Don Pasquale his ‘sister’; Ernesto’s “Sogno soave e casto” (“Fond dream of chaste love”), when he despairs of marrying Norina; and Norina’s Act I aria, “So anch’io la virtù magica” (“I too know what spells a glance can dart”). Perhaps best of all is Ernesto’s Act III garden serenade to Norina, “Com’ è gentil’ (“How gentle she is”). With music as beautiful as this, not even a misguided stage director can spoil Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.