An entertaining performance with wry undercurrents about getting old.
'In the past people were happy enough when an opera contained singing. For current audiences, used to zapping, that is not sufficient. So directors look for solutions to keep opera alive in between its hipper and faster siblings film and musical.
At the Dutch Nationale Reisopera the line between brightening up and going over the top is closely watched. So too in this Don Pasquale.
[...] The overture is funny: a stage full of elderly people. Like an opera house with the audience watching itself. But seeing the stumbling pensioners becomes more jarring when, in their ill-fitting nightshirts, they visit Don Pasquale’s nightmares of old age. However, Donizetti’s music - ultimately the vehicle for it all - is of an Mozartian lightness, and so you leave the theatre cheered up after all.'
Maarten Mestrom in ‘De Stentor’
November 11, 2010.
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Don Pasquale: a comedy on growing old.
Don Pasquale: a comedy on growing old. That, in a word, captures Wim Trompert’s debut production at the Dutch Nationale Reisopera. The director casts an interesting light on Donizetti’s old rich man, in a performance with a fine cast and an outstanding orchestra. [...]
Don Pasquale lives in a kind of luxury service flat, next door to a home for the elderly with a group of wonderfully portrayed old folks (the Reisopera’s choir - may they be praised!) Gradually during the opera one sees the old man, so self-assured and energetic when he first entered, decline. Until in the end it becomes pityful to see how ‘youngsters’ manipulate him.
This perspective provides Don Pasquale’s persona with a depth that is unusual for a comic opera such as this. It is almost touching, the way the director depicts old age. At the same time Trompert creatively maintains a sense of humour.
Jordi Kooiman in Place de l’Opera
translation Writech, Remco Nieuwenhuis
Zhang Huiong: Norina
Tuomas Katajala: Ernesto
Quirijn de Lang: Notario
Eleanor David: La Direttrice
Lya Duiveman, Julia Kleute and Ingrid van Ree: Drie Dames:
Antal ten Broeke and Dirk-Jan Hesselink: Male nurses
Old age: something to dread. Certainties evaporate, morals change, those around you laugh at you. It happens to Don Pasquale in Donizetti’s opera, a comedy with sadistic features. His nephew, doctor and wife all humiliate and exploit the rich man, while elegant melodies swirl around.
At the Dutch Nationale Reisopera producer Wim Trompert moves the scene from a country estate to an old people’s home. Fine wallpaper masks chilly corridors.’
Floris Don
in NRC, 8 November 2010
Floris Don
in NRC, 8 november 2010
Tuomas Katalaja,
Carmelo Corrado Caruso and
Zhang Huiong
Koor van de Nationale Reisopera
Conductor: Jeremy Carnall
Stage Director: Wim Trompert
Assistent Director: Hester Steijn
Set Design: John Otto
Costume Design: Mirjam Pater
Licht Design: Uri Rapaport
Photo's: Marco Borggreve
De Nationale Reisopera
Gaetano Donizetti: Don Pasquale