A 'Don Pasquale' set in Fellini's Rome with dozens of Green Cats
Operatic creative partners Barbe & Doucet on the Timeless Appeal of Don Pasquale
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Mack McGillivray:
This is Inside Vancouver Opera. I'm audio producer Mack McGillivray. We have a special episode for you today hosted by former guest on the show, baritone Luka Kawabata. Luka had the chance to speak with world-renowned production partners, André Barbe and Renaud Doucet.
Renaud Doucet:
Sometimes it's very interesting also to revisit some operas years later because you get a fresh perspective on things.
André Barbe:
And it's interesting because you don't see it the same way. You design or you direct something and let's say 15 years ago and now you're asked to do another version of it, which is totally different because you're a different person. Your outlook on life is different.
Mack McGillivray:
Over the past 24 years, Barbe & Doucet have teamed up to create more than 40 spectacular new productions for opera houses around the world. They joined Luka to discuss their vibrant interpretation of Don Pasquale. Running from February 10th to 18th at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tickets are available at VancouverOpera.ca.
Luka Kawabata:
Why would a theatre audience in Vancouver enjoy an opera like Don Pasquale?
Renaud Doucet:
First, because it's theatre… it's a story and it's a very moving story about old age, which touches everybody, the young and the old for different reasons. It's a love story, but first the libretto is very good. Second, the music is absolutely excellent. Donizetti is a fantastic composer for me. Donizetti is a composer that is sometimes underrated, like Massenet is underrated in North America. Donizetti is underrated, but the music is of the highest, highest quality.
André Barbe:
And the libretto in that case is very good. This one stands the time because it is really about, as Renaud said, the relationship between young people and all people and our vision of each other. And a young woman who's in love with a young man, but an old man who needs to find a bride. And these relationships that are still happening today, of course.
Renaud Doucet:
But it's the look of generations upon the other generations and it's an everyday story. And now that I'm getting older, I can say, "Oh, those young people."
Luka Kawabata:
What advice would you give to people and possibly young people who feel like they don't connect to opera?
Renaud Doucet:
First, they don't connect because they don't know. They don't know about it. It's like food. You need to try, you need to taste, you need to give yourself the chance to see what it is. We work a lot in Europe. For that, a lot of young people come, have the chance in Europe to come to the opera and they love it. They absolutely love it, but most of them, the first time, they don't know it. So, if we give the chance to them to experience what opera can be, what live theatre can be, and more than that, the experience of theatre in music with the live orchestra and live singers, then it's really amazing.
André Barbe:
And for some people don't know anything about opera, we can tell them that there are surtitles so they can definitively follow the action because most people say, "Oh, I don't like opera. I don't understand anything. It's an Italian or Russian," or whatever language it is. But there are subtitles. That's great because it means many communities can come and see it and it's easy to follow.
Renaud Doucet:
Opera is an international language. The music touches your soul, and the theatre also stimulates your brain. It's totally international and what is good, I always say to people, if you come to the opera for the first time, just read a little bit about the play before. Just do a little bit of homework. If you decide to spend a bit of money, make it really worth it.
Luka Kawabata:
What makes Don Pasquale an ideal show for first-time opera goers?
André Barbe:
It's a good story. They can relate to the cast, I think, and especially since the fact that we've put it in the 60s, it's nearer from today than it was originally when it was done in the 19th century. It's an everyday story. It's not about gods or people who are inaccessible. These are relating characters, and I think that's why it should be easy to follow for them.
Luka Kawabata:
Is there one particular opera that made either of you fall in love with the art form?
André Barbe:
I wouldn't say fall in love at first, but when I was very young in the 70s, my grandfather introduced me to opera. He could have been a great tenor and his love of opera was beyond anything, and he sat me in front of a broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera, and I remember that they were performing Rigoletto. I wasn't in love, but I was so surprised at the scale of it all because these voices and my grandfather explained to me that there was no amplification and those big sets and a lot of people on stage. So it really caught my fancy and I said, "Wow, that's very interesting."It's probably later on when I started to listen to some Puccini. Yes, I admit I'm a Puccini fan. I love it. I'm still touched. I still cry when I hear Boheme or Butterfly, that I really got hooked.
Renaud Doucet:
It's funny because the first opera I saw was Pelléas and Mélisande, so exactly the opposite of this. No big chorus, no big charade, no big things. Absolutely one of the most intimate, but one of the biggest masterpieces that exists in the opera world, and it was at the Opera Comique and I must have been 11, and I was absolutely fascinated.
Luka Kawabata:
Is there a different way that you approach a comedy like Don Pasquale versus a drama?
Renaud Doucet:
Comedies are very different from drama. What is very difficult in comedies is to have a good rhythm. The rhythm is the key word in comedy. So if the joke, is half a second too early or half a second too late, it falls flat. Comedy needs to be like a Swiss clock. That's why rehearsing comedy is much more difficult than rehearsing Tosca, a drama. This flows. Turandot is easier to put on stage on this way than a comedy like Pasquale or like Cenerentola by Rossini. It requires extreme, extreme precision.
Luka Kawabata:
Can you share with us how you developed your vision for the production and design of Don Pasquale?
André Barbe:
Since the beginning when we decided to work together, Renaud and I we said, let's do the dramaturgy together. Because when you're approached by different company, depending if it's in Germany or in France or in England or in Scotland or in Sweden, they want you to have a point of view about the piece you're going to do. It's not simply to open the opera booklet and say, "Okay, it's set in the 19th century, 1830s, and we're going to do it as it was done originally." Not at all.
We are asked to have a personal point of view, and our point of view is trying to reach today's audience. What we do is we do basically a tennis match of ideas. We throw an idea and the other one responds with another idea, and then we bounce to each other some ideas until we found the context for it. Do we keep it in the 19th century? Do we keep it in another era? Until both of us are satisfied, and Renaud will say that he doesn't like compromise, so we need to be both satisfied. Then we can start.
Luka Kawabata:
With this production, how did you come to select 1960s Rome for the ideal adaptation?
André Barbe:
We were walking in Rome one day because we went in Rome many times, and I remember we saw at one point near the Colosseum, so many cats. And we said, "Wow, that's very interesting." Rome is full of cats. When we did it originally, it was created for Scotland. And Scotland in the winter, it's beautiful, but it's quite usually rainy and grey, and we wanted to bring some warmth to the Scottish people in those days. And of course Rome evokes thoughts of beautiful architecture, La Dolce Vita, all these films with Anna Magnani and a certain moment in the history of cinema that was wonderful living.
Let's take an aperitivo, but you see all these thoughts. We wanted people to feel good about it, so we said, "Let's put it in a pensione." Because also when we were travelling in Rome, we lived in pensiones.
Renaud Doucet:
The story of Pasquale, there is what the story is written in the libretto and what you do with it. The story of somebody who considers himself rich and doesn't know how to transmit his heritage, but the first question is, what is it to be rich? What is the amount? You can be rich with a small amount. Then what is it to be old? The difficulty is that there is a difference in between comedy and buffoonery. He's not a buffoon. He's not an idiot, far from it. He is not well treated by young people, and this is something that should touch us, and very often it's something that is not shown, but we wanted to show it because it is written in the score.
Luka Kawabata:
There is so much detail in this production, including a lot of green cats on stage. Are there any specific details that you would instruct the audience to look out for?
Renaud Doucet:
We decided to have Don Pasquale being the owner of a an old run down pensione, an old hotel that is not taking care of. He's absolutely in love with cats. Now, the other parameter we have in this story, we have a doctor. Okay, doctor of what, it is not mentioned. So we said, "Okay, Don Pasquale adores cats, but he is allergic." So he goes to see this Doctor Malatesta, who is treating him for his allergies, hoping that one day he'll be able to have a cat. And the cat is the projection of his desires, of his fantasy, of his frustration. But the cats are also green because they're toxic for him. The love that he's projecting everywhere and at the same time is the toxicity of those cats. But he would love to be surrounded by them.
André Barbe:
And if you notice in the set, if you look, it's not only green cats that we have. We have a multitude of different size cats, illustrations of cats. Then of course, Norina in the second act, when she decides to change the whole thing, she removes all the cats and he's quite unhappy.
Renaud Doucet:
And she comes in the same type of green than the cats, and then she becomes this little kitty and the little kitty transforms into a panther because you don't know what the little cat is going to grow into.
André Barbe:
The details are also in the colours because the complimentary of the colour is this reddish background that we have the pensione in, so the cats really do stand out.
Luka Kawabata:
What would you say is the greatest challenge of a production like this?
André Barbe:
The biggest challenge of a production like this is certainly to have singers who are going to be willing to really act. We ask a lot of them because they need not only to sing and to follow the conductor, but they also need to put themselves into the character and to really believe and make us believe that they are the character because this is how it's going to work. This is how it's going to attract a good audience.
Renaud Doucet:
In an opera, I always say to the singers, "I say in opera, there is no music. You create the music. The singers, the emotion of the singers create the music. The singers should never follow the music. The music is the result of their emotion. What we need to do is to be extremely honest on every little emotion, to be able to create every little note."
I am extremely detailed on this, and at the end it looks absolutely easy. To look easy, it's a lot of work, but to be able to do that, you also need singers, and you need a cast that is able to project themselves in a character, project themselves into a situation, and we have a fantastic cast at Vancouver Opera to do this.
André Barbe:
And a fantastic conductor, Jacques.
Renaud Doucet:
And of course working with Jacques again, this is wonderful. We love him. So it's going to be really fun for that because we know that those singers are actors who are singing and not singers who pretend to act.
Luka Kawabata:
Who would you say would enjoy this production of Don Pasquale?
Renaud Doucet:
Everybody.
André Barbe:
Yeah. No, but really.
Renaud Doucet:
No, no, but it's at the same time for the absolutely opera aficionados, because you have some fantastic music and you really have some very difficult arias to sing and very difficult parts to sing. It is for the people who know nothing about the opera, and you will enjoy a great night of theatre in music. It is for old people because they will feel, relate, and really be touched by this. It is for the adolescent because they will relate to the young couple, and it is for the child because they're going to laugh so much that it's fun. So when I say for everybody, I'm not joking.
Luka Kawabata:
What lasting impression would you like the audience to take away from this production?
Renaud Doucet:
Take care of your elderly.
André Barbe:
Take care of your elderly, and it's because of the world that we're living in is so difficult at the moment, but enjoy the beauty of what we have and love each other and be happy because you've saw a good show and your heart is full of music and good thoughts.
Mack McGillivray:
What a wonderful sentiment. Thank you again to guest host Luka Kawabata. Don Pasquale runs from February 10th to 18th at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Get your tickets now at VancouverOpera.ca and I'll see you at the opera.
Credits
André Barbe - Guest, Costume & Set Designer
Renaud Doucet - Guest, Stage Director and Choreographer
Luka Kawabata - Host
Mack McGillivray - Audio Producer