DONIZETTI: Don Pasquale (Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 2002) (NTSC)

Gaetano Donizetti
Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale - Alessandro Corbelli
Ernesto - Antonino Siragusa
Norina - Eva Mei
Dottor Malatesta - Roberto de Candia
Un notaro - Giorgio Gatti

Orchestra & Chorus of the Teatro Lirico, Cagliari
Gérard Korsten, conductor

Stefano Vizioli, stage director

Recorded at the Teatro Lirico, Cagliari, February 2002

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: LPCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (All Region)
Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Spanish
Booklet notes: English
Running time: 121 mins (Opera) + 31 mins (behind the scenes)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

• This lavish 2002 production of Gaetano Donizetti's cynically humorous take on love, marriage and romance, now repackaged and re-released at midprice, features the Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro Lirico, Cagliari, conducted by Gérard Korsten, and the voices of Alessandro Corbelli, Eva Mei and Roberto de Candia.
  
  
• Donizetti's music provides a comic opera sui generis. Coloratura arias, cavatinas and romances, duets and ensembles reveal a musical with which puts the opera on a level with Rossini's Barber of Seville and Verdi's Falstaff.
  
  
• When Don Pasquale had its premiere in 1843, Donizetti was already marked by the illness from which he suffered. In 1846 he was admitted into an institution in Ivry near Paris with signs of progressive paralysis. He died in his native Bergamo in 1848.

"The acting is first class, everybody relishing their roles, Alessandro Corbelli's Pasquale, bumbling, pompous and outraged, Eva Mei’s Norina shrewish and petulant and full of good humour and Roberto de Candia, a knowing, hoodwinking Malatesta. … A visual delight, a sparkling production with fine comic performances" MusicWeb