Vancouver Opera’s Don Pasquale led by conductor Jacques Lacombe

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Don Pasquale at Vancouver Opera

When: Feb. 11 and Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 18, 2 p.m.

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Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton St, Vancouver,

Tickets: Information here

Sandwiched between two blockbusters — The Magic Flute, which opened Vancouver Opera’s season, and Carmen, which rings down the curtain — we have an opportunity to enjoy Gaetano Donezetti’s Don Pasquale, a bel canto opera from 1843.

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Donezetti was both prolific and popular. Opera fans now tend to think of him first as the composer of Lucia di Lamermoor; his Daughter of the Regiment and Elixir of Love are also revived regularly. Don Pasquale isn’t quite as well known, but it’s a fine piece in what promises to be an exciting production created by André Barbe, costume and stage design, and Renaud Doucet, stage direction and choreography, with Jacques Lacombe conducting.

Barbe and Doucet explain: “We imagine Don Pasquale owns a small, run-down pensione. Old and something of a hermit, he leaves the running of the hotel to his nephew Ernesto and his staff — a rum bunch, including a chain-smoking chambermaid, a greasy cook, and a past-it porter, so old that he has shrunk inside his uniform. A chorus of tourists comes and goes.”

Vancouver Opera audiences are already well acquainted with the work of conductor Jacques Lacombe; this will mark the first production of his time as VO’s new music director.

The team of André Barbe and Renaud Doucet introduced themselves to Vancouver back in 2017 with a grand, extravagant Turnadot, followed by La Bohème two seasons later.  For this third Barbe/Doucet show, we get to see what the duo can make of an earlier work in the bel canto idiom.

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Central to their concept of Don Pasquale is updating the setting to Rome in the 1960s. “We are essentially using dated imagery to give the audience sufficient distance from the story,” they told me in a pre-rehearsal phone chat.

Setting the story in our age of emails and cell phones just wouldn’t work. Choosing the 1960s, just a decade and a half after World War II, makes sense: the point is to use an era close to — but not of — our time, to help audiences understand the characters and their motivations.

Where it comes to the score and the libretto (“So good you could do it without music!”) they saw themselves as the honoured custodians of sophisticated, nuanced music, where each and every note and indication deserves the utmost respect. “We use the overture to reveal the setting. We have designed it like a fotoromanzo, the black and white photographed comic books that Italians of all ages used to enjoy.”

Both producers are adamant that this is not comic opera, but rather a dramma giocoso, a term many opera aficionados associate with Don Giovanni.  “Don Pasquale is not a buffoon,” they emphasize.

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“The opera is about misunderstandings between the generations. Inside every old person is a young spirit. It is fundamentally sad, but here the situation becomes unexpectedly comic. It’s a fantastic play made very human.”

While the characters can be read as archetypes, they are not intended as caricatures. “We tell each singer every day, you must be sincere.”

Those singers include Montreal-based soprano Elizabeth Polese as Norina. Victoria native tenor Josh Lovell plays Pasquale’s nephew Ernesto. Vancouver Opera favourite baritone Gregory Dahl, heard last season in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, sings the title role.

More opera in February

Want more opera in February? The UBC Opera Ensemble mounts Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon in four performances, Feb. 1 to 4 and, after all, who doesn’t like an opera whose plot we all know?

Massenet’s fairy tale confection is a delight, complete with three important female roles: Cinderella, naturally; her fairy godmother, of course; and — Prince Charming? “He” is a pants role for soprano, all of which makes for some charming duos and trios. Add in a big cast with lots of smaller roles which are excellent opportunities for advanced students, and a delight for fans of Massenet’s belle epoch idiom.

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