I have a little gift for all of you. I just found it today. For those of you who are seasoned veterans, I'm sure you already know about it. But for those of us who are new to opera, and who won't accept anything but the best, there is a full recording of Don Pasquale from 1932! Not only does it naturally have wonderful singing, due to the time in which it was recorded, but Tito Schipa himself is in it! For my blind peers, do not turn it off after the first song if you inten to hear it all. After each song, there is a little pause, since these were originally 78s, not lps. For my fellow operetta lovers, this, while a true opera, is, nonetheless, very light, so it should appeal to you.

youtube.com/watch?v=lOOkdoN7pE…

If, like me, you don't know Italian, here is the libretto in English. I'm sure there are others, but this is from a year before Schipa's birth, so it's not full of modernised language and other nonsense. I don't know if that is done often with operas (it is with operettas, to my extreme annoyance), but it's better to be safe than sorry. My strategy has been to read one or two scenes, then listen to some of it, then read more.

archive.org/details/donizettis…

#78Rpm #DonPasquale #FullOpera #GaetanoDonizetti #opera #Italian #TitoSchipa