DON PASQUALE

The director Paweł Szotak had no doubts: the excellent music and the superbly written libretto of this opera give the directors, as well as the artists performing in the play, the opportunity to create a dynamic and entertaining staging. Such was the premiere of “Don Pasquale” by Gaetan Donizetti, which inaugurated the XXX Bydgoszcz Opera Festival.

“Don Pasquale” is one of the best and at the same time the last of the operas of the buff Gaetan Donizetti, composed to the libretto by Giovanni Ruffini. The world premiere took place on 3 January 1843 at the Théâtre Italien in Paris and in the same year the work was successfully staged on the stages of Brussels, Vienna, London, Milan... In June 1844, the Polish premiere took place at the Warsaw Opera.

- Donizetti's “Don Pasquale” is one of those operas that is staged all the time on stages around the world and interpreted differently. I tried to show in “Don Pasquale” not only humor, of which there is of course a lot - and I think that the viewer will smile more than once, watching the vicissitudes of the main characters - but I also found a lot of emotion there, which seems to me very interesting in this opera - said Paweł Szotak just before the premiere, without hiding that the opera He read the work through the lens of Donizetti's dramatic biography.

The action of “Don Pasquale” on the stage of the Opera Nova was not by chance transferred to New York from the turn of the 40s and 50s of the XX century, and the title character has many features in common with the cult in American cinema character of the Italian mafioso.

- “Don Pasquale” is about love and power. The main axis of conflict is the constant clash of what is masculine with what is feminine. If the opera were to be given a different title, it might have been “The Fall of the Patriarch.” In our culture, the character of the mafioso Don Corleone, created first on the pages of the novel Maria Puzo, and later played by Marlon Brando in the film “The Godfather”, has become a popular icon of male power. We will refer to this character a little and play with it a little - explains the director of the play Paweł Szotak.

The dark office, in which Don Pasquale, in the presence of two security guards, receives his “intercessors” or the shooting in one of the streets of New York, which is the site of the unsuccessful assassination of the main character - allusions to the legendary “Godfather” will not be missing in the opera staging, also in the costumes.

- From the first conversations with the director, I knew that the film inspirations for this staging of “Don Pasquale” would be very important. Of course, our film theme is “The Godfather”, but not only. When designing costumes, other films whose action takes place in that era were also very inspiring for me, such as “Gilda” (1946) with Rita Hayworth or “Casablanca” (1942) - admits costume designer Sylwester Krupiński and emphasizes that the films were only the starting point for creating costumes that... - They will not imitate anything, and above all characterize characters, while capturing the vibe we wanted to get.

The whole staging is realized on a rotating stage, which — as explained by the author of the scenography Mariusz Napierała — fosters the cinematic narrative of the performance, consisting in the smooth transition of the action between three (and the fourth in the final) different stage spaces, such as the Don Pasquale house (in which over time the darkness will brighten... roses!) , a New York street in a noir atmosphere (so characteristic of American gangster cinema) and Norina's modest boudoir, which in the second part of the show will be transformed into an idyllic garden).