Don Pasquale at The Centre, Kerikeri

Conal Coad is a rotund rapscallion Don Pasquale. Picture / Malcolm Pullman

The NBR New Zealand opera opened its touring season in Kerikeri with Donizetti's Don Pasquale, and the region's new performing arts centre provided theatre facilities that Auckland might well envy.

After the company's miscalculated 2004 Cosi fan Tutte, their Don Pasquale was the model of a travelling show.

Skilfully trimmed to two hours, with a first-rate cast, it was also handsome to look at, thanks to John Verryt's ingenious screens which reconciled Edwardian collage and 21st-century computer technology.

Conal Coad was a rotund rapscallion of a Don Pasquale. He was not afraid, as director, to sanction some pier-side humour - within minutes he let forth a belch during a colleague's big bel canto moment.

Yet, despite moments of delirious farce, Donizetti's music sparkled like a casket of jewels, and Coad's singing was one of the prize gems.

Two fine young English singers - Ashley Catling and Lorina Gore - were the lovers and their Notturno duet had them dispensing rapture in sixths. Gore, looking uncannily like a young Joan Collins, appeared in what looked liked an Edwardian bathing costume on a Gaiety Girl swing.

Her crisp diction never failed her, nor did her wicked sense of fun, banishing husband to bed with adamant coloratura.

The eternally dapper Andrew Conley was a brilliant Malatesta.

He gave us a bel canto treasure in Fair as an angel and was a deft patter-partner for Coad - the audience would have been ecstatic had the men's final song-and-dance duet gone on forever, in the best Gilbert and Sullivan fashion.

Richard Leckinger brought the house down as the Notary and provided a bosomy presence in a shuffle-on part as the solitary representative of the serving class.

As if there wasn't a surfeit of theatrical pleasure, musical values were unimpeachable, with the small, stylish orchestra responding to every nuance of Wyn Davies' direction.

Unbelievably, Auckland has but one visit from this engaging production, tomorrow night. (Wellington and Wanaka have been the only venues to get two performances.)

Some may consider a trip to Rotorua on Monday or Tauranga on Wednesday to catch the Don and friends before they head south.