New performances: 25. and 27. 05. 2017
The comic opera Don Pasquale by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti, a masterpiece of its genre, was created in the final period of his career and has featured regularly in the repertoires of the world’s greatest opera houses for over 170 years. Donizetti gave precise subtitles to all of his comic operas, with Don Pasquale designated a dramma buffo. The opera’s premiere in 1843 achieved great success and it soon became one of his most popular works. Through its three acts we follow an entertaining story about two lovers, Ernesto and Norina, who attempt to thwart the elderly bachelor Pasquale’s plan to marry Norina. Numerous disguises, cases of mistaken identity, errors and dramatic twists are the main characteristics of this opera which plays on stereotypes at a frantic pace and uses the characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte: Pasquale is based on the whimsical Pantalone, Ernesto on the love-struck Pierrot, while Norina draws on the tricky Colombina. Nonetheless, Donizetti’s Pasquale is a genuine character, more complex than its source: he is honest and overemotional, funny one moment, curmudgeonly and naïve the next, enthrallingly gallant or hopelessly melancholy, but always, even in the most difficult moments, incorrigibly optimistic and full of life. After many twists and turns, the young couple manages to get married and the opera ends with a cheerful finale and joyful playfulness alongside a wise home truth, as Pasquale is forgiven for wanting to marry a young girl in his old age.
More: http://www.hnk.hr/en/predstave/don-pasquale1/