SARATOGA SPRINGS — Although there are only four characters in “Don Pasquale,” they easily get themselves worked up and tangled up in high pitched drama. In Opera Saratoga’s new production, which opened on Saturday at Universal Preservation Hall, each cast member displayed a flare for larger than life expression. Their vocal performances were satisfying yet the greater effort not so much.
Donizetti’s score has a light-hearted character and sometimes frenzied pace, but the comical elements felt applied with over acting and through props and costumes. A low point was when the clerk, a miniscule role, arrived as a stoned out beach bum wearing a judge’s powdered wig. That bit toward the end of Act II drew huge laughs, so maybe I’m taking things too seriously.
Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Universal Preservation Hall, Saratoga Springs
Length: Two hours, 30 minutes; one intermission
Continues: 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 7 and 2 p.m. Sunday, July 9. Tickets at: operasaratoga.org
I did find it cute when Norina, who’s a maid in this production, sang into a lime green toilet brush as if it was a microphone and thought it clever when Pasquale and Malatesta wielded golf irons as if in a fencing match.
In the program, director Meaghan Deiter compares the opera to a rom-com. Instead, what came to mind repeatedly was reality TV, a format that, like opera, encourages performative emotional expression. Anshuman Bhatia’s stark daytime lighting of the stage also fed the comparison to TV.
Back to the singers: Bass baritone Andy Papas was a likeable, even sympathetic Don Pasquale. Whether joyous or aggrieved, he bore largely the same tight facial expression, yet he carried the vocal role in his bones. Baritone Trevor Haumschilt-Rocha as Dr. Malatesta was Pasquale’s equal in confident robust Italian singing. Toward the end of the…
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