Glyndebourne 2013: Don Pasquale - Do I hear a waltz?

Pay close attention, and you'll hear that the big Italian heart of Donizetti's comic masterpiece beats in three-four time.

Watch Glyndebourne's current production of Don Pasquale here, available on demand until 31 August.

Why does Don Pasquale stick to our ribs more than most bel canto-era comedies? Its zany characters and situations are just as deeply indebted to the back-alley antics of commedia dell'arte and its ancestor, Roman comedy, as those of, say, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816). Yet Donizetti's final comedy seems something more, at once a summation and an apotheosis of Italian comic opera.

Don Pasquale (1843) was created at a time during which the rollicking Rossinian opera buffa was ceding to cozy, sentimental opere semiserie like Bellini's La sonnambula (1831), in which the happy endings cost some sighs and tears along the way.

Don Pasquale is also redolent of another contemporary fashion, the Viennese waltz. In 1838, Donizetti had moved to Paris, where Chopin was then in the midst of transforming this newly popular ballroom dance into virtuoso piano works of astonishing expressive range. Four years later, after the triumph of his melodramma Linda di Chamounix at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, Donizetti was appointed Court Composer to Emperor Ferdinand I, which obliged him to live in the Austrian capital for six months a year.

Small wonder that Don Pasquale, which had its premiere in 1843 at the Théâtre Italien in Paris, is suffused with the notoriously infectious strains of the Viennese waltz, whether deliberately or subliminally. The waltz was the wanton 19th-century successor to the courtly 18th-century minuet, by way of the humble Austrian Ländler, an earthy 18th-century country dance in three-four rhythm.

Remember the scene in The Sound of Music when Maria and Captain von Trapp finally realise they're in love? They're dancing the Ländler, gazing into each other's eyes and touching for the first time.

In the early 19th century, scandal had erupted when 'respectable' couples began tripping the dance floor in such fashion. When England's Prince Regent (later King George IV) held a ball in 1816, The London Times wrote, 'We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced (we believe for the first time) at the English court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressure on the bodies in their dance to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females.'

Only in the mid-1800s, when the Ländler's heavy, rustic accents had morphed into the lighthearted glide of the ballroom waltz, was the dance allowed in the salons of polite society. It swiftly became the musical signature of the Austrian Empire, courtesy of Johann Strauss and family.

If you're a regular opera-goer, chances are you hear a lot of waltzes – and not just where you might expect to, in Viennese operettas like Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow, or in nostalgic evocations of Old Vienna like Der Rosenkavalier, which actually takes place long before the waltz ever existed and certainly long before it was considered civilised enough for noble salons. The waltz seems to have been the favourite dance of Puccini, who often used it to give his characters an excuse to touch each other, as in Il tabarro or La fanciulla del West.

The flamboyant 'Musetta's Waltz' from La bohème is a veritable musical roadmap of seduction. And in La rondine, Puccini's Viennese operetta manqué, the waltz is the bittersweet musical milieu of the entire piece. The captivating dance also turns up in operas as diverse as Faust, Eugene Onegin and even Elektra, where the eponymous heroine literally dances herself to death with an ecstatically grotesque waltz.

In Don Pasquale, the supple, seductive rhythm of this heartiest of all dance forms serves as a recurring symbol, Donizetti's code for youth. Soon after 'Bella siccome un angelo' ('Lovely as an angel'), Malatesta's shameless sales pitch for his bogus sister Sofronia, Pasquale trades in his foursquare patter and co-opts the Doctor's triple metre in his jubilant reply, 'Un fuco insolito' ('An unfamiliar fire'), just to show us he's young at heart. From that point on, virtually all of the 'hit tunes' in Don Pasquale are waltzes: Norina's introductory cavatina, the lily-gilding 'Quel guardo il cavaliere' ('That glance struck the knight') and her breezy Act II exit tune 'Via, cara sposino' ('Away, little husband!'); 'Aspetta, aspetta, cara sposina' ('Just you wait, little wife!'), the show-stopping, proto-Gilbertand-Sullivan patter duet for Pasquale and Malatesta in Act II; the sublime 'Tornami a dir che m'ami' ('Come tell me you love me') love duet in ethereal thirds that precedes the final scene; and, finally, the irrepressible 'punchline' in the opera's finale ultimo, 'Bravo, bravo, Don Pasquale' ('Well done, Don Pasquale!').

For its musical elegance, moments of tender sentiment and humanisation of stock commedia characters, Don Pasquale has sometimes been called 'Mozartian'. Though it may rightfully accept this most sublime of compliments, Pasquale, with its stringaccompanied recitatives, progressive musical continuity and 19thcentury sensibility, also looks forward to that greatest of all Italian comedies, Verdi's Falstaff (1893), written 50 years later.

Like Falstaff, Pasquale is a valedictory work, the 65th of the prolific Donizetti's 67 operas. In both operas, a composer ending his career bequeaths us a tale of a senior citizen with romantic delusions who is outwitted by younger folks armed with love and brains. Both operas also boast an uncommonly spunky, self-reliant heroine, and both temper the old protagonist's final rude awakening with a sweet but clear-eyed reconciliation. And as sui generis as Falstaff is, it is hard to imagine that Verdi did not have Don Pasquale in mind when he wrote his great comedy. The madcap final scenes of both works are prefaced with moonlit tenor serenades followed by nocturne-like soprano-tenor love duets. For this age-burnished vista on young love alone, we may continue to cherish both Italian operatic masterworks.


This essay is reprinted from Glyndebourne's 2013 programme, with kind permission.

Cori Ellison

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Don Pasquale - trailer

Donizetti's comedy - with a sparkling cast that includes the 'sparky and watchable' Danielle de Niese - will be streamed live from Glyndebourne on Tuesday 6 August from 7.15pm (BST).

31, Jul, 2013 @12:52 PM

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Donizetti's Don Pasquale - in pictures

Images from Glyndebourne's production of Donizetti's comic opera that will be streamed live on Tuesday 6 August and available to watch on demand until 31 August

03, Aug, 2013 @11:05 PM

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Don Pasquale, starring Danielle de Niese - video

Danielle de Niese, singing the role of Norina, introduces us to her fellow cast members and the creative team behind this production of Donizetti's comic opera

05, Aug, 2013 @8:21 AM

Article image
Don Pasquale – review

Don Pasquale can be cruel, but Mariame Clément's production allows for a few guilty laughs, writes Erica Jeal

Erica Jeal

19, Jul, 2013 @5:22 PM

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Don Pasquale - synopsis and cast/creatives

Don Pasquale will be streamed live from the Glyndebourne festival on 6 August from 7.15pm (BST). The performance will end at 10.10pm.

30, Jul, 2013 @1:26 PM

Article image
Don Pasquale podcast - audio

Peggy Reynolds and guests discuss Donizetti's work, its commedia dell'arte roots, how it teams with beautiful music, and why Donizetti broke the mould with this, his, 64th of 66 operas.

The performance on Tuesday 6 August will be streamed here live from Glyndebourne and then available to watch again demand until 31 August.

01, Aug, 2013 @12:56 PM

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Billy Budd podcast

Peggy Reynolds and guests discuss Benjamin Britten's opera, based on a Hermann Melville short story.

20, Aug, 2013 @2:53 PM

Article image
Danielle de Niese: 'I'm ripe and ready for Donizetti now'

Danielle de Niese dreamed of becoming an opera singer from early childhood. Now, as she stars in another lead role at Glyndebourne, she reveals how she became one of the world's most sought-after sopranos

Stuart Jeffries

01, Aug, 2013 @4:20 PM

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Falstaff - synopsis and cast list

Richard Jones's production of Verdi's great comic opera made its debut at the festival in 2009 and was recorded the same year. We will be streaming this recording here on the Guardian from 1.30pm on Friday 21 June and it will be available to watch until 31 August.

16, May, 2013 @12:49 PM

Article image
Glyndebourne 2013: Hippolyte et Aricie - in pictures

Hippolyte et Aricie was Rameau's first work for the stage, written when he was nearly 50 and first performed in Paris in 1733. Glyndebourne's new production - its first ever Rameau - is directed by Jonathan Kent, designed by Paul Brown and conducted by William Christie.

18, Jul, 2013 @4:05 PM