Opera review: L’Elisir d’Amore - Royal Opera House
WITH a genuinely funny and touching plot and gloriously hummable music, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore is the perfect comic opera and the current revival of Laurent Pelly’s delightful production of it shows it off to great effect.
The plot centres on the love country bumpkin Nemorino harbours for the beautiful Adina who outclasses him in every possible respect.
When quack doctor Dulcamara comes to town, however, Nemorino sees his chance and asks for an elixir to make Adina fall in love with him.
Never one to fail to take advantage of a total schmuck, Dulcamara sells him a bottle of cheap red wine as the Elisir d’Amore (love potion) he craves and waits for it to bring results.
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Meanwhile, word has got around among the village girls that Nemorino’s uncle has died, leaving him a fortune.
Nemorino doesn’t know this yet, so assumes the attention he is receiving from the money-grubbing girls is the result of the elixir.
At the same time, Nemorino has a rival for Adina’s love in the form of the manly Sergeant Belcore whom Adina agrees to marry just to punish poor Nemorino for snubbing her, and he is near panic when she announces that she will do so that very evening, before the love potion has had a chance to work.
Nemorino joins up with Belcore’s forces just to get enough money to buy more elixir and comic hell breaks loose as he gets steadily more drunk on the cheap wine.
It is all glorious fun and made even more so by some splendid casting to produce of group of singers who seem to be truly enjoying themselves and bring some glorious singing and high-class coming acrting to the show.
South African soprano Pretty Yende both looks the part of Adina and has excellent voice control to cope effortlessly with Donizetti’s demanding twiddly bits.
This is her Royal Opera debut, but I feel sure we shall be seeing a lot more of her.
The Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan is another star in the making, playing the part of Nemorino with excellent comic skills.
His performance of the opera’s real show-stopper “Una Furtiva Lagrima” (one furtive tear), when Nemorino feels his greatest despair, was beautifully delivered and packed with emotion.
Italian baritone Paolo Bordogna was also excellent as Belcore, who is usually portrayed as a one-dimensional brute, but this time had more depth, while Alex Esposito showed good comic skills in his portrayal of Dr Dulcamara whom he played with some physical actions and grimaces that reminded me of Christopher Lloyd in the Back to the Future films.
My only reservation about the production was in the conducting of Bertrand de Billy.
He certainly got the Covent Garden orchestra to bring out the excellence of the music, but more than once the singers got out of time with the orchestra.
The conductor always managed to cure this quickly by ceasing to conduct for a few seconds to ensure that they listened to each other properly, which I am assured is the right thing to do, but the fact that it was necessary suggests there was insufficient rehearsal time with players and singers together.
No doubt this will improve as the run extends.
All in all, however, this is a real feel-good elixir that send all the audience home with a big smile on their faces.
Anyone who thinks they like musicals ought to come to Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore and see how musical fun ought to be accomplished.
Box Office: roh.org.uk or 020 7304 4000 (until June 22; cast change June 13)
