★★★★☆
Rheumatism and migraines. Obesity and body odour. Flatulence, constipation and impotence. The Italian advertisements for Doctor Dulcamara’s medicine in Laurent Pelly’s 2007 production of L’elisir d’amore are easy to translate. Donizetti’s bel canto comedy of love, pride and quackery anticipates Verdi’s Falstaff in its tender mockery of human frailties and its warm embrace of the simplest pleasures: a kiss, a tear, a happy ending.
We all want a magic cure for our problems, especially problems of the heart, and none of us is immune to the cheering effect of a tot of red wine. Jaunty trumpet tunes, a plangent bassoon, sparkling patter songs and a “barcarolle” in 2/4 time are just a few of the highlights in this deliciously concise 1832 romantic comedy. The plot is scrim-thin, a rural High Society, and none the worse for that. All that concerns us is how to get the haughty Adina (Pretty Yende) and the humble Nemorino (Liparit Avetisyan) from their comic-strip clinch at the close of Act I to their kiss at the end of Act II.
Give or take a few mishaps with the shutters on Dulcamara’s van, Chantal Thomas’s witty designs scrub up well in this revival. Scooters, pushbikes and a little dog (Eddie) zip across a sunbaked 1950s landscape. You can almost smell the hay from the vertiginous stack where Adina lies painting her toenails in the opening scene. The chorus singing is crisp as a cannoli shell and the movement direction is tight. Although Bertrand de Billy’s conducting needs more zest, and the strings need more discipline, the Rossinian and Mozartian influences are neatly pointed.
This was Yende’s Royal Opera debut and if the company has any sense, it should hold on to her as tightly as Avetisyan does on stage. The South African soprano has everything: a lovely, breezy sound, faultless agility, stamina, charm and a terrific, tireless appetite for the hiccups and backflips of Felice Romani’s tongue-twisting, heart-squeezing libretto. Nurtured on a Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation award, Avetisyan sings with a honeyed, old-fashioned lyricism that offsets his character’s Gumpish gormlessness. Paolo Bordogna delivers some nifty slapstick as the puffed-up, adenoidal Belcore, while Alex Esposito nearly steals the show as the snake-hipped snake-oil salesman, Dulcamara.
Box office: 020 7304 4000, to June 22