Have you ever been to an opera and walked out humming the concept? Theoretically, it shouldn’t happen, for the main reason companies keep staging these old works is to keep their magnificent music in the public ear. But sometimes the visions of the director and designer are so much at the forefront of a production that the music ends up playing second fiddle.
Such could almost be said of Minnesota Opera’s season-opening production of Gaetano Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale.” Almost. But Donizetti wove enough beauty into his romantic arias and suffused his duets, trios and quartets with such enjoyable vocal one-upmanship that his music is never pushed aside by a nevertheless quite imaginative staging.
Director Chuck Hudson’s framework is that the rich, grumpy and aging Don Pasquale, who’s out to cut his nephew out of his inheritance and find love for himself, is a former silent film star consigned to “legend” status. It’s now the 1950s, and Hollywood’s gone Technicolor, leaving his career in the dust as he tries to revive it in one bad sci-fi flick after another. Much of this information is delivered in newsreel-style footage during the overture and between scenes. It’s a lot of fun — particularly trailers for the bad ‘50s films like “Tentacles 2” — that proves a novel way to use minutes normally spent in a darkened theater during scene changes.
Yet there were times when I felt as if Hudson tried to stuff too much into his reimagining of this mid-19th-century Italian opera. A chorus full of familiar Hollywood figures did nothing to add to the action, but that was a challenge left to the director by Donizetti: All they do is recap what you’ve already seen, so perhaps the composer was merely trying to expand the cast list for what is basically a four-character opera.
And while it’s nice that Hudson pays homage to his mentor, master mime Marcel Marceau, with a scene in which Don Pasquale’s downtrodden nephew proves inept at one suicide method after another, that’s one of the lone instances in which a classic comedy bit is used to drive the story forward rather than digress from it.
Concept aside, the four performers at the fore do tremendous things with their characterizations and with Donizetti’s music. In the title role, Craig Colclough is made up in black, white and gray to contrast with the bright colors around him, and he admirably doesn’t make a cartoon of this candidate for a comeuppance that’s been passed down from the days of Renaissance commedia dell’arte. He’s a decidedly human-sized Don Pasquale, believably smitten with his prospective paramour and at his best in rapidly pattered tandem with fellow bass-baritone Andrew Wilkowske as the doctor who launches the revenge plot propelling the story.
But the opera’s best arias almost invariably are given to the lone woman in the central quartet, and Susannah Biller sings each with a clear, powerful soprano and an ideal combination of charm and snark. Her initial aria — delivered during what seems to be a bubble bath commercial — is a delight, as are her romantic duets with David Walton as Don Pasquale’s nephew, Ernesto.
And that’s the role that provides this production’s breakthrough performance. Walton has consistently impressed since his days with male vocal group Cantus, and he gave up that gig to pursue an opera career. He’s been strong in smaller roles with Minnesota Opera, but this is his first genuine star turn and he makes the most of it, casting a spell with solos of sadness and yearning. His voice is appropriately old-school, but with distinctive touches entirely his own, bursting with beauty and emotion.
Add on the exceptional work of conductor Jonathan Brandani and the Minnesota Opera Orchestra and, even if the staging concept doesn’t work for you, the music certainly should.
IF YOU GO
- What: Minnesota Opera’s “Don Pasquale”
- When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
- Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul
- Tickets: $200-$25, available at 612-333-6669 or mnopera.org
- Capsule: A fun staging concept threatens to shove the music aside, but the singing’s too good.
