Scottish Opera: Don Pasquale, Glasgow review: 'colourful, quick-fire comedy'

Scottish Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is every bit the colourful, quick-fire comedy it was when first conceived ten years ago. Still under the quirky directorial control of its original twin production team André Barbe and Renaud Doucet, who oversee every stage aspect except the lighting design (Guy Simard), this is as much about honouring the 19th century buffa spirit of Donizetti as instilling in its 1960s Rome-inspired makeover a fiery, frenetic buzz.

The ageing Don Pasquale’s home is now a jaded Italian pensione with comically useless skeleton staff, a kind of geriatric Fawlty Towers. Baritone David Stout is physically unrecognisable in the title role: padded out and donning a hideous combover. Brilliantly characterised, he bears the consequences of his miserly actions with infectious buffoonery. Scooting around him, amid the crazy perspectives of the comic book backdrop, occasional allusions to 1960s Italian fotoromanzo, even a chihuahua identifying as a cat, are the hyperactive agents of Pasquale’s comeuppance, their collective vocal prowess matched by restless, scintillating theatricality.

Full respect to soprano Simone Osborne – standing in as Norina for the indisposed Stacey Alleaume – whose electrifying guile and vocal charisma toyed endearingly with Tongan tenor Filipe Manu’s Ernesto (searing and serious) and Korean baritone Josef Jeongmeen Ahn’s Doctor Matatesta (compellingly ambiguous).

Add to that the whimsical antics of Frances Morrison-Allen’s chain-smoking Maid, Jonathan Sedgwick’s decrepit Porter, Steven Faughey’s unsavoury dancing Cook, Jonathan Forbes Kennedy’s dullard Notary, an artfully industrious chorus, and you have the complete package. The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, with noticeably ripe Sicilian-style trumpeting, is at its emotionally-charged best under Stuart Stratford.

Eden Court, Inverness, 2 November; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 10 November; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 21 November