DON PASQUALE

Director Paweł Szkotak had no doubt that the opera’s magnificent music and brilliantly crafted libretto offered both the creative team and the performers an opportunity to create a lively and entertaining production. And that is exactly what the premiere of Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, which opened the 30th Bydgoszcz Opera Festival, proved itself to be.

Don Pasquale is regarded as one of Gaetano Donizetti’s finest operas and was also one of his last works in the opera buffa tradition. It was composed to a libretto by Giovanni Ruffini. The world premiere took place on 3 January 1843 at the Théâtre Italien in Paris, and later that same year the opera was successfully staged in Brussels, Vienna, London and Milan, among other cities. The Polish premiere followed in June 1844 at the Warsaw Opera.

“Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is one of those operas that remains a permanent fixture on stages around the world and continues to inspire a wide range of interpretations. In my production, I wanted to bring out not only the humour, of which there is naturally a great deal—and I believe the audience will smile more than once at the adventures of the main characters—but also the considerable emotional depth I found in the work. To me, that is one of the most fascinating aspects of this opera,” Paweł Szkotak said shortly before the premiere, adding that he had approached the work through the lens of Donizetti’s dramatic life story.

It is no coincidence that the Opera Nova production relocates the action of Don Pasquale to New York at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, while the title character shares many traits with the iconic figure of the Italian mobster familiar from American cinema.

“Don Pasquale is a story about love and power. At the heart of the conflict lies a constant clash between the masculine and the feminine. Were the opera to be given another title, it might well be called The Fall of the Patriarch. In popular culture, one of the most recognisable symbols of male power is the mafia boss Don Corleone, first created in Mario Puzo’s novel and later portrayed by Marlon Brando in the film The Godfather. Our production both draws on that figure and plays with it,” explains the production’s director, Paweł Szkotak.

A dimly lit office, where Don Pasquale receives his “visitors” flanked by two bodyguards, and a shoot-out in a New York street during a failed attempt on the protagonist’s life are just some of the references to the legendary The Godfatherwoven into the production—including its costumes.

“From my very first conversations with the director, I knew that cinematic inspirations would play an important role in this production of Don Pasquale. Naturally, The Godfather is our main film reference, but it is not the only one. When designing the costumes, I also drew inspiration from other films set in the same period, such as Gilda (1946), starring Rita Hayworth, and Casablanca (1942),” says costume designer Sylwester Krupiński. He stresses, however, that these films served only as a starting point for costumes that “do not imitate anything, but above all help define the characters while capturing the atmosphere we wanted to create.”

The entire production unfolds on a revolving stage, which, as set designer Mariusz Napierała explains, enhances its cinematic style of storytelling. The action moves seamlessly between three different settings—and a fourth in the finale: Don Pasquale’s house, where the darkness gradually gives way to… pink; a noir-inspired New York street, evocative of classic American gangster films; and Norina’s modest boudoir, which is transformed into an idyllic garden in the second half of the performance.