Don Pasquale

The last time I went to the opera, it was Madame Butterfly. Don Pasquale was quite the opposite (in the sense that it's a comedy and not a tragedy)--it was delightful and hilarious and silly. Like a chick flick of an opera. It struck me as both the opposite of Romeo and Juliet--in the sense that there are lots of coincidences, but the coincidences always work out for good--and of The Taming of the Shrew: Norina tames the difficult uncle, Don Pasquale, into not disinheriting his nephew for falling in love with and wanting to marry her. The moral of the story is that old men shouldn't marry (and should, rather, will their money upon their death to their handsome nephews).

Norina (an actress, at least in this version) explicitly mocks male chivalry, sarcastically reading some romantic poetry. Her take is that romance does not result from men's valor, but rather from girls being clever and manipulative and getting what they want from men (although in this case, her manipulation is in the service of true love, however deceitful it is). And women do come out looking pretty powerful in Don Pasquale--both Ernesto (the nephew) and Don Pasquale (the uncle) are fools in their own way.

Don Pasquale plays with plays--Norina is an actress; some of the scenes are set in her theater; her scheming with the doctor to fool Don Pasquale forms a play within a play. In addition, the servants themselves, at one point, put on masks and perform another play within a play. At the end, Norina declares in her speech that it is the epilogue and precisely what lessons the viewer should take from the play.


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