Blu-ray – Donizetti: Don Pasquale

Royal Opera favourite Bryn Terfel heads the cast for this exhilarating production of Donizetti’s comedy of domestic drama across two generations. Don Pasquale is the witty story of a middle-aged man whose supposed young wife runs rings around him – with her own ulterior romantic purpose in mind – and has long delighted and surprised audiences, not least as presented with the sparkle of its music and the virtuoso skill of its performers. Damiano Michieletto’s production shows how contemporary the characters still are and how immediate and touching the story remains.

"Terfel sounds wonderful, singing with handsomely focused tone and brings considerable panache to his duet with Werba, which is denied its traditional encore here. In the pit, Evelino Pidò conducts with admirable precision and grace." (The Guardian)

"Don Pasquale is a genuinely funny comic opera and Damiano Michieletto's production updates it in a way that makes it funnier still." (The Daily Express)

"Bryn Terfel is a delight ... marvellously resourceful, playing Don Pasquale like a second cousin to his Falstaff. Olga Peretyatko, making her Royal Opera debut, has a soprano of diamond-cut brilliance for the mettlesome Norina. Markus Werba is the quick-witted Malatesta and Ioan Hotea a nicely youthful Ernesto. Evelino Pidò conducts with native Italianate zing." (The Financial Times)

"Bryn Terfel’s Pasquale – at first stumbling and self-important, then pathetically impotent – is a brilliant creation, more sympathetically imagined than any character he has incarnated thus far in his career." (The Independent)