Few works are at once as light-hearted and as profound as Falstaff. Giuseppe Verdi chose to end his operatic career with a comedy when everyone was expecting another tragedy. Yet beneath the laughter lies a lucid reflection on old age, the passing of time, appearances and the human condition. The laughter in Falstaff is never superficial. Shakespeare, who created the character, had already mastered the art of blending the sublime with the grotesque, humour with melancholy, and Arrigo...

La fille du régiment of 1840 was Gaetano Donizetti’s first opera set to a French language text (by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François-Alfred Bayard). Its premiere at the Opéra Comique in Paris has been described as a ‘barely averted disaster’ with the lead tenor apparently being frequently off-pitch, and composer and critic Hector Berlioz slating the piece as he had his own axe to grind with Donizetti. Nevertheless, Berlioz...

L’elisir d’amore of 1832 is one of Gaetano Donizetti’s most popular and light-hearted works. Set in a village in the Basque Country at the end of the eighteenth century it sees the humble Nemorino love the landowner Adina, even as she tells him she is fickle and that he should forget her. When, however, she reads the legend of Tristan and Isolde, Nemorino is inspired to ask travelling quack doctor Dulcamara if he has any of the potion that enabled Tristan to win his love....

Very often the experience of opera takes on an exclusively artistic or aesthetic character and we live it as an experience of the spirit. Sometimes, though, the experience of opera resembles more that of a sports event, or a risk sports event to be more precise. We are then in front of a form of vocal athletics. It is a different experience, with lots of adrenaline, very gratifying in the moment and perhaps less so in the long term. La fille du régiment, by Donizetti, is an...

Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges had been missing from La Scala stage for nearly 40 years, since 1978, when they had been presented as a diptych under George Prêtre’s baton. Their comeback in the production from the Glyndebourne Festival from 2012 (resumed in 2015) has been warmly welcomed by the Milanese audience as thoroughly enjoyable, brilliantly conceived entremets between the main courses of La fanciulla del...

Don Pasquale by Donizetti. Lorenzo Regazzo, bass-baritone. Valentina Naforniţa, soprano, Juan Francisco Gatell, tenor. Marius Kwiecień, baritone. Orquestra Simfònica of Gran Teatre del Liceu. Choir of Gran Teatre del Liceu. Diego Matheuz, conductor. Laurent Pelly, stage director. Joint production of Gran Teatre del Liceu, The Santa Fe Opera and San Francisco Opera. Gran Teatre del Liceu. Barcelona, 16th June. *** Don Pasquale isn’t maybe a master piece, but...