David Ruano

Each recording features a stellar Norina—Ruth Welting, Lisette Oropesa, and Sara Blanch. These broadcasts also include Giuseppe Taddei, Joshua Hopkins, and Xabier Anduaga, among others.

Although I prefer L’elisir d’amore, Pasquale has considerable charms. Although its title role offers prime opportunities to its lead buffo for both comedy and pathos, the opera can often be stolen by its other three principals.

Don Pasquale has rarely been mounted expressly to showcase its Norina, but surely the Met’s 2006 Otto Schenk production was designed around Anna Netrebko. For its premiere she was paired with Juan Diego Florez who unfortunately at the gala premiere dropped out after the second Act. I was there to hear Barry Banks pop in and he did well though the ravishing “Tornami a dir” duet lacked its intended star power.

At a later revival in 2016, its tenor stole the spotlight from both an ebullient Ambrogio Maestri as Pasquale and debuting Eleonora Buratto who was uncomfortably miscast in a comic role. However, Javier Camarena stopped the show more than once, though he denied the cheering audience the encore it wanted on opening night.

There hasn’t been a Met Pasquale since then. Pretty Yende and Mariuz Kwiecien performed the Norina-Malatesta duet at the Met’s Gala commemorating the 50th anniversary of the new house with an explicit suggestion that they’d be appearing in a Pasquale revival, but that is probably one of many casualties of either COVID or the ever-shifting repertoire priorities of the Gelb regime.

Of course, the late Welting and the very much alive Oropesa are well known to readers here, Catalan soprano Blanch may not be—yet. She’s been having a particularly note-worthy season so far. After starring in Laurent Pelly’s production of Il Turco in Italia in Lyon she went on to wrest the spotlight—at least temporarily–from Lise Davidsen and Michael Spyresin Vienna’s Ariadne auf Naxos as its scintillating Zerbinetta. She’s Aspasia this year in Mozart’s Mitridate Re di Ponto in both Madrid and Salzburg as well as Ophêlie in Hamlet in Torino.

Anduaga, her Ernesto today, made a thoroughly winning Met debut as Nemorino in 2023. He’ll return this fall as another bel canto E – Elvino — in the new production of Bellini’s La sonnambula opposite Nadine Sierra with whom he’s sung the opera before.

Donizetti: Don Pasquale

Norina: Ruth Welting
Don Pasquale: Giuseppe Taddei
Ernesto: Dalmacio Gonzales
Malatesta: Angelo Romero
Notario: Didac Monjo

Conductor: Roberto Abbado
Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona
3 May 1986
Broadcast

Norina: Lisette Oropesa
Don Pasquale: Kevin Glavin
Ernesto: Javier Abreu
Malatesta: Joshua Hopkins
Notario: Tyler Zimmerman

Conductor: Gary Thor Wedow
Pittsburgh Opera
April/May 2019
Broadcast

Norina: Sara Blanch
Don Pasquale: Carlos Chausson
Ernesto: Xabier Anduaga
Malatesta: Andrzej Filonczyk
Notario: David Cervera

Conductor: Josep Pons
Gran Teatre del Liceu
1 October 2022
Broadcast

Each Don Pasquale can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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