If you’re down in the dumps, as poor Nemorino is, take yourselves off to English National Opera’s new production of The Elixir of Love (L’elisir d’amore) tout de suite, or should I say toot sweet, for this very English version of one of Donizetti’s delightful operas, variously described as opera buffa, bel canto opera and melodrama giocoso.
Director Harry Fehr has relocated Donizetti’s nineteenth century opera to England in the early 1940s, to a house and estate requisitioned for land girls and RAF officers. Upstairs and Downstairs has taken in Dad’s Army.
The tongue-in-cheek sitcom (in Zahra Mansouri’s costumes) is proclaimed loud and clear on the drop curtain with its ENO TV logo, followed by credits, wartime slogans and Matt Powell’s comic strip cartoon putting the setting humorously in context.
Nicky Shaw’s attention to the tiniest detail (in her Venetian ‘Gondoliere’ duet with Dulcamara, Adina has a scythe as an oar in her hand) set design, first half in a downstairs kitchen large enough to accommodate locals as well as the army, the second upstairs in an antiques furnished drawing room with its French windows—is a joy to behold.
Simple soul Nemorino, a worker on Adina’s estate, is in love with his employer, but when she reads her workers (ENO chorus fab as usual) the tale of Tristan and Isolde, he gets the idea for a love elixir to help him win her. How fortuitous is it that con artist Dulcamara, a travelling salesman, turns up with his magic potions?
Nemorino falls for the scam, but in the meantime, Adina is being courted by arrogant wing commander Belcore. Now we know Nemorino and Adina will end up together, but the musical journey there is delightful. The games of love never run smoothly and are not supposed to, adding a tiny bit of frisson to proceedings.
The arias and duets—in Amanda Holden’s amusing, at times Gilbert and Sullivan-esque, translation—are mellifluous. As Salieri’s one-act opera put it, Prima la musica et poi le parole. It’s Donizetti’s music that touches the heart first before we decipher Felice Romani’s translated, witty libretto. Hard to believe it was originally done in a matter of weeks.
Now, I’m not keen on opera in English translation, and I’m dreading una furtiva lagrima sung in English, but I’m going to eat my hat: Thomas Atkins (Nemorino) delivers it with beautiful expression and modulation. He finally hits the tear-inducing spot, as if he’s been saving himself for it.
Both his light tenor and Rhian Lois’s (Adina) sweet soprano seem to start off rather low key in the first act, voices not carrying too well over the orchestra (conductor Teresa Riviera Böhm making her ENO debut tonight). Or it could be they are not carrying to where I’m sitting in the dress circle. I’m more interested in Dan D’Souza’s (Belcore) clear, rich baritone and bass-baritone Brandon Cedel’s Dulcamara doing his foot-tapping patter song.
But, come the second act, the two lovers are rejuvenated, their voices soar and dazzle. They have paced themselves and the drama. Director Fehr has done a marvelous job. The arc of the, let’s admit, silly and predictable love story has been energized. It’s a production that does not hurry.
Adina teases Nemorino to distraction. She knows what she is doing but won’t admit to herself that she loves him, this lowly, dim worker, obviously not going down the Lady Chatterley’s Lover route yet. Belcore is the better option and a speedy wedding to him to wind Nemorino up.
When Nemorino, playing it cool, waiting for the elixir to kick in, is suddenly fawned on by willing women, she takes notice. What he and she don’t know yet is that he has inherited his rich uncle’s estate.
Giannetta (soprano Segomotso Masego Shupinyaneng), one of the land girls, has been spreading the gossip, though sworn to secrecy. In the meantime, to add some complications, Nemorino has been persuaded to enlist by Belcore—for money to buy more elixir.
Adina buys him out, breaks off the engagement with Belcore. That parachute silk wedding dress, was it contraband? All is possible in love and war. And sings of her love for Nemorino in a voice that broaches no question: “Take it, I’ve set you free / Prendi, per me sei libero”. She has set herself free, too. “I’ll love you till I die.”
Belcore swiftly propositions another girl… In time of war, morals can slip. And spiv Dulcamara does well out of Nemorino’s success: the whole community scrambles to buy his potion.
I saw L’elisir d’amore with Pretty Yende as Adina and Matthew Polenzani as Nemorino streamed from the Met during lockdown when it lifted my spirits. Harry Fehr’s new production does the same. Characterisation is superb. There are laugh-out-loud moments and many a chuckle here and there.