Tuesday night at the Four Seasons Centre it was the turn of the Ensemble Studio cast to give us Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.  It’s the same Barbe et Doucet production of course but director Marilyn Gronsdal, conductor Simone Luti and an excellent cast definitely gave it their own twist.  Everybody seemed to have their own bit of business that we didn’t see on opening night and they all worked.

Alex Halliday, in the title role managed the far from easy feat of portraying a man more than twice his age.  He was splendidly doddery and even managed to give his voice an older timbre.  All of this on top of an excellent vocal performance making short work of all the silly patter songs including the duets with Korin Thomas-Smith’s Malatesta.  His was a fine and individual performance too.  His singing was very good indeed but I think it was his physical exuberance that made it special.

Wesley Harrison did some proper bel canto tenoring as the hapless Ernesto.  It was probably the best performance by an ES tenor in this sort of rep that I’ve heard since Andrew Haji was around.  Ariane Cossette was very funny as the scheming Norina.  She sang accurately, with a fair bit of heft and the very necessary agility.  She very much created her own version of the character.  It was good stuff.  Doug MacNaughton took the role of the Notary in a suitably stylish manner.

Simone Luti paced the show judiciously and never let it drag.  There were a couple of points very early on when i thought the orchestra was going to cover the singers but that cleared up very quickly and after that there were no balance problems.  As ever, the chorus and orchestra were excellent.  I noticed some particularly fine playing from the brass.

As General Director Perryn Leach put it afterwards “comedy is hard” but this lot pulled it off splendidly.  There was no sense in which this performance was some kind of second rate outing for the youngsters.  It was somewhat different from the main cast performance but every bit as good.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz