On August the 24-th, Varna State Opera will perform the opera “Don Pasquale” by Gaetano Donizetti .
The theme of an old bachelor who wants to find a young woman but is deceived has been very popular since the days of commedia dell’arte and has been used as a plot by many composers of comic operas.
Donizetti took the plot from the comic opera “Sir Marcantonio” (1810) by Stefano Pavesi based on the comedy by Angelo Agnelli. This is his 64th opera, out of a total of 66 (according to some researchers, the number of operas is 72, and the new editions of some of the works are added to this figure).
Donizetti personally wrote the libretto of Don Pasquale. He reworked it significantly from that of the source material, cutting out a lot of the characters.
Despite the fact that at that time Donizetti was recovering from a serious illness, he wrote the music of the opera with incredible speed – in just eight days.
The premiere of “Don Pasquale” took place on January 3, 1843 at the Theater Italien – Paris with a huge success. The first performance in Italy was on April 17, 1843 in Milan’s La Scala. In the first Vienna production of “Don Pasquale”, which took place a month after the one at La Scala (May 14, 1843), Donizetti added the famous comic duet between Don Pasquale and Doctor Malatesta “Cheti, cheti immantinente”.
You can get tickets for the event at the Tourist information centre in Veliko Tarnovo or online at eventim.bg
A special gift for the viewers will be the audio-visual show “Tsarevgrad Tarnov – sound and light”, which will be broadcast after the end of the performance.
