Baltimore Opera Company Perspectives Lecture
Donizetti's Don Pasquale

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Chris Myers. I am the Director of Education here at Baltimore Opera, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to tonight’s production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.

Italian opera in the first half of the nineteenth century tended to fall into one of a few broad categories, each with its own set of conventions. The two most common genres were the opera seria, or serious opera, and the opera buffa—the comic opera. Don Pasquale is, of course, an opera buffa—kind of like the 19th-century equivalent of a sit-com. As we all know, television sit-coms have a well-developed set of character stereotypes and stock situations. There’s the comforting best friend, the wacky neighbor, the grumpy boss. Even if you’ve never seen a particular show before, it doesn’t take long after tuning in to figure out who’s who and what’s going on. For better or for worse, this set of conventions allows writers to communicate with a few key signifiers which they can pretty much take for granted will be instantly understood by their audience.

By the 1840s, opera buffa had developed to a similar point. Over the past several decades, the genre had evolved a well-defined set of stereotypes and conventions. Opera buffa generally features much smaller casts than opera seria, and the most important character signifier in this genre is voice type. As soon as characters opened their mouths to sing, the audience instantly knew who they were and what part they would play in the plot. The soprano was always the heroine. The hero is always played by a tenor—this is a significant change from the operas of a few decades earlier, when the hero was almost always played by a castrato, male soprano, or countertenor. The rival lover is always a baritone; authority figures, older men, and servants are also played by baritones or basses. Those of you who were here for Il Trovatore’s Perspectives Lecture will remember Glenn McNatt’s comment that opera is what happens when the baritone tries to convince the soprano that she shouldn’t sleep with the tenor. Well, this is when all those conventions first began to gel.

By the time Donizetti began composing Don Pasquale in October of 1842—he wrote the whole show in less than three months—he could safely assume that his audiences would instantly recognize each of his characters. This allowed him to create very quickly a remarkably vivid opera buffa distilled down to a barebones cast of the four most basic buffo characters: the soprano heroine, the tenor with whom she is deeply in love, the bass as the cranky old man trying to break up their love affair, and the baritone as his clever servant.

Perhaps the most unique character in opera buffa is the bass. Because low voices had come to be associated with age, the basso buffo soon came to signify one of two characters: drunk and bumbling old men or clever plotting servants. These roles surface as early as Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni—Figaro and Leporello are both classic basso buffo roles. In Don Pasquale, two of the four principals fall into this category.

The first of the basso buffo characters in this opera is, of course, Don Pasquale himself. Donizetti wrote the part of Pasquale for a true basso buffo, and, as we will soon see, he used every trick in the buffo book to convey Pasquale’s character as a cranky, bumbling old man.

The second character who fits into this category is Dr. Malatesta, who is written for a baritone. Dr. Malatesta is Pasquale’s doctor and confidant—a close friend of the family. Like many of the clever servants featured in operas buffa across the years, Malatesta is extremely loyal to Don Pasquale and will go to great lengths to insure his well-being—even to the point of plotting against him when he feels Don Pasquale is acting against his own best interests.

Now, composers use different techniques to set vocal lines for different characters and situations, and the vocal lines of the basso buffo have unique demands and characteristics. In bel canto and many other vocal techniques, the importance is placed on the beauty of the voice and the lyrical quality of the vocal line. This is not the case with the basso buffo. Like those actors said to have “character voices” in modern Broadway musicals, the most important thing a basso buffo had to know how to do was to be funny and to establish character clearly. Beauty of tone and voice were secondary considerations.

Foremost among the techniques composers used to assist the basso buffo in this goal are the use of “patter” style vocal lines. In this style of vocal writing, the singer basically speaks the words on pitch as the orchestra accompanies him. A good example of this can be found right at the very beginning of Don Pasquale. In this scene, Don Pasquale enters and revels in the plan he has devised to force his nephew to choose a proper wife. Pay attention to the interaction between the orchestra and the vocal line.

[music clip – “Zitto!”]

In this example, Don Pasquale confines his singing mainly to a single pitch—G. He is essentially speaking the words on this pitch while the orchestra plays the melody underneath him. What is essentially expository dialogue attached to a relatively uninteresting vocal line is made into something more entrancing and flowing by Donizetti’s use of the orchestra. The singer doesn’t have to concentrate on beauty of tone or lyrical line—that’s the orchestra’s job here. Instead, the singer is given the chance to focus his attention on acting and establishing character.

Another trick used to establish character for the basso is the use of a comic vocal line. These lines tend to feature broad contrasts in volume, character, and articulation; large melodic leaps; and are often in a quick dance-like meter. In the aria we’re about to hear, Don Pasquale expresses how young, attractive, and virile he feels. The thought of a cranky old man prancing about the stage describing how virile and irresistible women find him offers lots of comic opportunities for the singer. Take a listen to how Donizetti does it:

[music clip – “Un foco insolito”]

You can hear how Donizetti makes use of broad contrasts to keep the music alive and infuse it with a sense of energy. Pasquale’s vocal line alternates between light, detached, hushed phrases and long lyrical lines in full voice that arrive suddenly with no warning. The melodic leaps in the line give it a kind of charming awkwardness that provides a musical parallel to Pasquale’s overblown claims of agility and virility.

Perhaps the most common trick used in buffa writing, though, is simply to have the characters spit out lots of words as fast as they possibly can. This duet between Pasquale and Malatesta occurs towards the end of the opera. In it, Pasquale expresses his excitement at the prospect of finally getting a hand up on his wife, while Malatesta is delighted that Pasquale has fallen for the trap. First you will hear Pasquale, and then Malatesta will sing his part—same music, different text. Once they’ve both sung their parts, Donizetti goes back through the same music yet again—but this time, they both sing their own texts at the same time, at breakneck speed. While you’re listening, see if you can hear some of the other aspects we’ve discussed so far, as well. Here we go:

[music clip – “Aspetta”]

As in the first example we heard, you can hear how the orchestra takes over melodically once the characters go into the patter song, providing a broad contrast between the leisurely melody of the orchestra and the frantic jabbering of the singers, who have to work hard to keep up as the orchestra begins to speed up.

Thus far, I have focused mainly on how Donizetti conformed to buffo conventions in this show. However, what is most significant about this opera is how he worked against convention. Donizetti wasn’t some brain-dead hack throwing together a show at the last minute. Genre conventions were a kind of dramatic shorthand he knew he could count on the audience understanding, and he used that to his advantage. Don Pasquale never wastes time stating the obvious, but Donizetti did not allow conventions to restrict his dramatic expression. For instance, let’s take another look at the title character.

In classic opera buffa, the bumbling old man is a purely comic figure. He runs about onstage getting himself into bigger and bigger messes, and we are meant to laugh at him. In general, he is consistently cranky or oblivious, and depth of character is rarely an issue. Throughout the first part of this opera, the character of Don Pasquale fits firmly into this convention—singing patter songs, complaining about those irresponsible youngsters, and blindly stumbling into traps set for him by the other characters. However, take a listen at what happens in the third act when, after trying to discuss an issue reasonably with his new wife, he gets mocked and slapped for his efforts:

[music clip – end of Norina/Pasquale duet]

After the argument climaxes in that slap, Don Pasquale sings to himself, “It’s all over, Don Pasquale. A man can only take so much of this. There’s really nothing left for you to do but go drown yourself.” As he sings this, Norina sings to herself, “Well, maybe we are going a bit rough on him.” This is a huge transformation—Don Pasquale is no longer just the cranky old man at whom we’ve been laughing all evening. He’s suddenly a real human being who has spent two full acts being systematically robbed of his dignity by those closest to him, and he just can’t take it anymore. This would have come as a complete shock to the 1843 audience—he’s the buffoon! He’s doesn’t have feelings! He never has in any of the other shows where I’ve laughed at him—or has he?

It’s like that moment in a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd suddenly breaks down sobbing because he just can’t catch that wabbit. As an audience member, you almost feel a twinge of guilt, because you realize that you have been mocking and trivializing something that is a very serious of part of who this man thinks he is. And therein lies the key to understanding Donizetti’s genius in this opera. He doesn’t just slap comic conventions together without thinking. Instead, he uses your preconceived notions of what should happen to lull you into a false sense of security and then, once you feel secure that you know what’s going on, he turns convention on its head and plays it against itself.