Gaetano Donizetti - DON PASQUALE - Overture

DON PASQUALE
Opera buffa in 3 acts
Composer: Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
Libretto: Giovanni Ruffini & the composer, based on Angelo Anelli’s libretto ‘Ser Marcantonio’
First performance: Théâtre-Italien, Salle Vendatour, Paris, 3 January 1843
SETTING: Rome, at the start of the 19th century.
PLOT: Don Pasquale, a rich old man, decides to marry. Dr Malatesta, unable to dissuade him, suggests that he marry the doctor’s sister Agnes, a timid, innocent girl raised in a convent. The sister is really Norina, a young widow beloved by Don Pasquale’s nephew Ernesto, whose marriage Pasquale has forbidden. Instead of the sweet wife he had expected, Don Pasquale has married a shrew. The old man eventually learns to his relief that the marriage was bogus, and gladly approves Ernesto and Norina’s marriage.
‘Don Pasquale’ is Donizetti’s most popular opera, and has been loved ever since its Paris premiere. It remained in the repertoire even in the dark days when all but this, ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ (1835) and ‘L’elisir d’amore’ (1832) had vanished. The opera is elegant and witty, although some critics complain that the plot, which involves the gulling of an old man, is cruel.
Overture
Conductor: István Kertész
Wiener Staatsopernchor und Orchester
Vienna, 1964