Ah! Un foco insolito (Don Pasquale)

Donizetti wrote Don Pasquale in Paris in the autumn of 1842, working from Angelo Anelli's old libretto for Ser Marcantonio, which he and Giovanni Ruffini reshaped; the composition took a matter of weeks. The premiere at the Théâtre-Italien on 3 January 1843 had Grisi, Mario, Tamburini and Lablache in the four parts. It is the last comedy in the buffo tradition to enter the permanent repertoire, and the least caricatured of them: the old man deceived by his own household is allowed, in the third act, a moment of humiliation that the music declines to laugh at.