Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale had its first performance at the Theatre-Italien in Paris on 3 January 1843, with a cast of four that included Giulia Grisi, Giovanni Battista Rubini, Antonio Tamburini and Luigi Lablache. Donizetti wrote it in a few weeks on a libretto Giovanni Ruffini adapted from an older text; Ruffini was unhappy enough with the composer's interference to refuse his name on the printed book. It was the last of his comic operas and is set, unusually for the genre at that date, in contemporary dress.