DON PASQUALE – REVIEW OF 2024 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

Don Pasquale was Gaetano Donizetti’s 63^rd opera and the last time it was produced by the Canadian Opera Company was a hefty thirty years ago. It is hoped that no one has had to wait that long to see this bouquet of melodies and comic business. It is paired this year with the heavy-duty Medea by Luigi Cherubini and no one can complain about the choices.

Don Pasquale inundates us with gorgeous melodies, a funny if thin plot and the COC’s production is a delight. The plot is as old and wonderful as comedy. Don Pasquale (Misha Kirla) is usually a rich old man but in this production is the owner of a small  pensione in 1960s Rome. He wants to marry Norina (Simone Osborne), a young and pretty widow who happens to be also smart and spirited. She is in love with Ernesto (Santiago Ballerini), the nephew of Don Pasquale. We need someone to get things moving and that happens to be Dr. Malatesta (Joshua Hopkins) who arranges the marriage of his “sister” (Norina really) to Don Pasquale to be officiated by a Notary (Alex Halliday) who may be no notary at all.

All the players are in place and the plot must move to get rid of the old fool and restore the young lovers to “happily ever after” and I hope I am not disclosing too much of the plot.

Andre Barbe and Renaud Doucet from Montreal are credited with stage direction, dramaturgy, sets and costumes. That’s all the COC program discloses. André Barbe does costumes and set designs while Renaud Doucet does stage direction and choreography. This production does not need choreography but it does get some dramaturgy and I suppose we can guess who did it.

 

Simone Osborne as Norina and Joshua Hopkins as Dr. Malatesta. 

Poto: Michael Cooper

Don Pasquale requires a bass, a baritone, a tenor and a soprano with good voices to deliver the gorgeous melodies, obviously, but also singers with a comic sense to bring out the laughs inherent in the plot. Don Pasquale must do well vocally and comically and in Misha Kirla the COC has found an outstanding singer/actor. Kirla is a baritone in a role that is usually sung by a bass. He is a big man especially compared to Ballerini and Osborne and made them look almost tiny.  

Soprano Osborne is a small woman but proved to be spitfire on occasion but she has a relatively small voice and she was overwhelmed by the bigger-voiced men around her. At times I found her unsatisfactory but she gave a spirited performance and showed spunk.

Ballerini as Ernesto was energetic and vocally spirited as the young man who wants to save his love and defeat his uncle who has a double-barreled gun pointed at him, he wants to deprive his nephew of his love and his livelihood by throwing him out. 

Misha Kiria as Don Pasquale and Joshua Hopkins 
as Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale, COC 2024. Photo: Michael Cooper

Joshua Hopkins as Malatesta is an ambivalent comic character who tricks his friend Pasquale into marrying his sister (a lie) by a Notary who is not a notary. Norina knows how to make Pasquale regret he ever married her in a well done and hilarious scene.   

Barbe and Doucet, as indicated, made Pasquale the owner of a pensione and thus allowed the chorus to be used as his tenants. It also facilitated the look of the set with several floors of windows towering over the main part of  the set which contained Pasquale’s living quarters. What looked like sheets hanging on a clothesline were lowered as the backdrop for the scene in the park and then changed for the scene with Malatesta and Norine.

Don Pasquale with its reliance on the eternal comic plot of the young outwitting the old for love and security and its shameless copying of commedia dell’arte characters suffused with the splendid music of Donizetti is a sheer delight and we should not have to wait thirty years to see another production.
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Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti opened on April 26 and will be performed a total of eight times until May 14, 2024, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

MEDEA – REVIEW OF THE 2024 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

Luigi Cherubini’s Medea has finally premiered in Toronto, a handful of years since it opened in Paris in 1797. No need to get churlish about it because  it had its New York debut at the Met in 2022. In fact, what we have is a coproduction by the COC, the Met, the Greek National Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. That’s quite a cast.

The COC’s Medea deserves a thunderous ovation on all counts. The cast, the direction, the orchestra and the design are probably of historic importance and a repetition of a production of this quality may not be around the corner. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait 217 years.

The opera is dominated by its central character, Medea, sung by the incomparable Sondra Radvanovsky. The soprano must handle a complex character who goes through a gamut of emotions that most of us cannot imagine. Medea was a princess and a sorceress in Colchis, a city on the east shore of the Black Sea, today’s Georgia. She betrayed her father to help the Greek hero Jason get the Golden Fleece. They married and had two children but Jason abandons her to marry Glauce, the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth.

We need to keep in mind that Medea committed gross crimes against her father and her country, became an outcast in Corinth, all to help Jason. He betrays her for another woman and Medea is in danger of losing everything, especially her two children. She still loves Jason who rejects her, she still loves her children and wants to kill them. The complexity and depth of emotions make her a woman full of pain, fury and betrayed love and she morphs into a monster. She decides to kill Glauce on her wedding day by giving her a poisoned garment and butcher her children as the ultimate revenge against Jason. She accomplishes both despite all moral standards to the contrary. Iago, Lady Macbeth, Clytemnestra and Lizzie Borden have nothing on this lady. I mention all of this because it is important to understand Medea’s character and appreciate the magnitude of Sondra Radvanovsky performance. 

Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea in Medea, The Metropolitan Opera, 2022, 

Photo: Marty Sohl

Cherubini’s opera contains all those conflicting and terrifying emotions and it is up to Radvanovsky to express them. She has the vocal power, the magnificent vocal prowess and the tonal expressiveness, beauty and fury to achieve it all. She rolls on the floor, agonizes about her decision. She pleads, indeed begs for her children, loves, cajoles but all her efforts fail. In the end, she slaughters her children in a performance that should be embedded in one’s mind indefinitely.

Soprano Zoie Reams gives a distinguished performance as Neris, Medea’s maid. She is faithful to the nth degree and delivers the poisoned garment to Glauce. Her singing is deeply moving and she turns a relatively minor role into a triumph.

Soprano Jane Brugger sings the role of the hapless Glauce who is about to marry Jason. She is nervous and afraid of what Medea might do and is brutally and mercilessly killed.  She is the blameless victim of Medea’s vengeful fury and she sings her aria “O amore, vieni a me!”  (Love, come to me) with such longing and fear that leaves one deeply moved.

King Creon and the ambitious Jason who is marrying Princess Glauce for the throne are not as sympathetic as the women though one could argue that no one is as bad as Medea. Tenor Matthew Polenzani is a virile Jason who pleads for his children and tries to be conciliatory to Medea but he does not get too much sympathy. Polenzani sings superbly and his Jason is well drawn.

A scene from  Medea, 2024, Photo: Michael Cooper

Bass-baritone Alfred Walker plays the authoritative King Creon who tries to assuage Medea’s fury by promising to look after her children – and raise them in the temple. Kudos to Walker for an authoritative performance vocally and physically.  

Two more stars deserve mention and praise. The COC Orchestra under the baton of Lorenzo Passerini performed Cherubini’s complex score with exceptional ability.

David McVicar’s direction and set design deserve the ultimate accolade of the word masterpiece. The set features a huge mirror above the performers so that we see the back of the performers as well as the front. There is judicious use of projections that in the end give one an extraordinary visual effect. The full drama of the opera is displayed in an unforgettable production. It is as if we are making up for ignoring the opera for so long.

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Medea  by Luigi Cherubini (music) and Francois-Benoit Hoffman (original libretto in French) in Italian version by Carlo Zangarini will be performed six time’s on various dates until May 17, 2024, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press