The Opéra de Québec puts on display on Saturday, and for four performances, Don Pasquale, comic opera in three acts by Donizetti. Original proposal: Jean-Sébastien Ouellette’s show will immerse spectators in a Quebec suburb at the time of Expo 67.
If you want to live an immersive experience at the Opéra de Québec, get out, gentlemen, your bell bottom pants and, ladies, your miniskirts. Such was the fashion in 1967. However, the management of the Opera did not specify whether it would reimburse the Cold FX to its short-dressed spectators when it invited “the public to come and attend the performances by adopting a look of the sixties in order to live a total and playful experience”.
The idea of asking spectators to wear a period look is, however, in line with the joyful spirit of director Jean-Sébastien Ouellette, who seems to have taken great pleasure in looking at the jewel of Donizetti.
Three centerpieces
History is as old as comedy in opera, from the moment this genre managed to break away from mythological subjects. A bluebeard covets a damsel, pursues her with his attentions, but is taken in by the cunning young girl and resigns himself, rather good-heartedly, to seeing her in the arms of a younger lover.
Don Pasqualeby Donizetti (1842), is almost the last representative of theopera buffa Italian, a genre that will shine one last time in Verdi’s swan song, Falstaffin 1893. Donizetti’s score is, with The Barber of Seville by Rossini and Falstaffone of the three masterpieces of the genre.
Don Pasquale, a wealthy bourgeois defeated by a cunning young woman, is the transfer of the character of Pantalone in the commedia dell’arte. The traditional Pantalone is an old merchant, often rich and esteemed, who, despite his age, is able to make amorous advances to young girls, the comical motive being that these advances never end in a positive way. The commedia dell’arte also invented the character of the doctor, who gets involved in everything. Don Pasquale’s is called Malatesta (headache). He plots the false marriage of Pasquale with Norina, suitor of Ernesto, the nephew of Don Pasquale, which the latter refuses to grant him.
Norina strongly takes up the character of the cunning servant Columbina, ideally represented at the opera in The servant mistress of Pergolese. In the case that concerns us, Doctor Malatesta will cause many headaches to Don Pasquale, since Norina, once married, will transform according to his plans into a real shrew turning Pasquale’s house upside down. Everything will be settled ultimately : this marriage being bogus, Norina and Ernesto will be able to get married with the “ringing and stumbling” blessing of the duped but tender uncle.
Need for emancipation
“Reading the booklet, I saw that Norina was a woman ahead of her time. She is a woman who takes her destiny into her own hands, a determined and luminous woman who does not allow herself to be led by her husband. Of course, it’s a conspiracy, but she has the courage to go all the way so that her love flourishes”, emphasizes Jean-Sébastien Ouellette, who notes that, in works of this type, it is generally the young lover who is at the maneuver.
Even though this is his first staging for a grand opera, Jean-Sébastien Ouellette, theater professor at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, is seasoned in the exercise. He is well acquainted with singing having been, for 10 years, a professor of interpretation at the Faculty of Music of Laval University, where he staged productions with the students.
“When I bent over Don Pasquale, I looked at him with a certain distance. You have to find the best way to tell the story so that it is funny. I wanted to bring this closer to us in a fun way. I found that the 1960s, and in particular 1967 in Quebec, with the Expo, the Beatles singing All You Need Is Love, it was a pivotal period, also for women and Quebec society, when young people were the most numerous and decided that society was going to be different. The youth then had a taste of freedom in the face of old people who did not want the world to change. This fight between the old times and the new world also echoes our time. »
The challenge of any transposition is logic and credibility. “That’s why I didn’t want to place the action in too contemporary a period, because I thought we would then lose the commedia dell’arte, says Mr. Ouellette. With cell phones, we have the means to get more information quickly. On the other hand, in 1967, despite the telephone, it was still possible to have difficulty in joining. When we called and no one was home, we fell into the void. So it remains credible that Ernesto is unaware of the plot, because the doctor forgot to warn him. Everything was therefore plausible within the framework of the dramatic springs put by the librettist [Giovanni Ruffini] in the opera. »
The idea stimulated Jean-Sébastien Ouellette in more ways than one: “What also touches me is that many spectators will recognize their own youth. So it will be emotionally pleasing, and the aesthetic of that era is very beautiful. »
The milkman and the nurse
Once his bias has been found, we feel that Jean-Sébastien Ouellette, who wanted “it to be pleasant to watch”, pushed the reasoning to the limit. Problem: Donizetti imposes a unity of place, the house of Don Pasquale. “I wanted to have a little fun with the places. Who says 1960s says suburbs, who says suburbs says bungalows, and who says bungalows says cars. So, digging quietly, we have an Italian suburb in North America. The choir members are suburbanites, neighbors and friends. However, at the time, each trade had its own costume. So we have a milkman, a postman, a station master, nurses. »
As if that weren’t enough, the director wondered why Don Pasquale wanted to get married so quickly. “I thought he would have had a little accident that would have made him see life differently. Don Pasquale would say to himself: “I don’t have so much time left to live, I have to take full advantage of it.” This led me to start Act I in the hospital, where Don Pasquale looks at his watch and wonders why the doctor isn’t there to discharge him…”
By “decompartmentalising” opera, Jean-Sébastien Ouellette seeks to “make a bit of a film” on stage. “If we made a film about Don Pasquale, we wouldn’t just shoot it in his house! he says with reason. But “for the set, we couldn’t rebuild a place each time, hence the use of projections”. On the other hand, for the costumes, the team took care of the details: “We had fun, for example, looking for how a nurse was dressed in 1967.”
The same went for furniture and accessories, to the point that Jean-Sébastien Ouellette became a fan of the Kijiji platform. “This all goes back almost 60 years, but there were some well-preserved period things that could be unearthed. We went everywhere to get the real furniture, the real costume. »
The designer of the show, which will be given again next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, has the answer to everything. When one wonders how he managed the line “Order that the horses be harnessed immediately” in the first scene of Act III, he is happy to reveal that “the horses, it will be a Mustang”!
Jean-Sébastien Ouellette does not forget the essential: “The important thing is the music, the singing. The singers are extraordinary, but my job is not the soundtrack, it’s the visuals. After having won over the singers with his concept, he built a model in which he makes Playmobil characters evolve. “I have children who are older but who had this. Each performer has their little figurine. The singers have fun with me and I did the set up work with that. »
Definitely, the concept of opera bouffe has rarely been declined in all directions with so much joie de vivre.