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Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore: Soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Conductor: Bruno Campanella. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 12.5.2009 (JPr)

Diana Damrau as Adina and Anthony Michaels - Moore as Belcore

Wagner summed up the orchestra in Italian opera as being a ‘giant guitar’ just there to accompany the singers and with this is mind it is fascinating how the legend of Tristan and Isolde, that became one of his great operas, is central to Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. In Act I Adina, a farm owner reads the story to her workers with the naïve boy, Nemorino, who is infatuated with her listening nearby. Adina is clearly educated while her employees are not and that includes Nemorino who Belcore, a sergeant, later tells to sign his conscription papers with an ‘X’. She gives the tragic tale of Tristan and Isolde the happy ending she herself wishes for and this is reflected in the happy ending to this actual opera when the ‘love potion’ seems to have benefited everyone apart from the rather deceived Belcore, but even he doesn’t seem to mind much.

The elixir ‘of Queen Isolde’ is just a means to an end - in vino veritas – and Nemorino gets drunk on the quack Dulcamara’s Bordeaux and has the courage to shun Adina and his indifference angers her so much that her injured vanity eventually leads to the recognition that she really does love him. Adina’s confession ‘Tu mi sei caro, e t’amo’ follows Nemorino’s plaintive ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ and this Act II moment mirrors what happens in Act I when he asks Adina what can he do about his love for her and she tells him to forget her and give his love to other girls. At the end all turns out well of course for Nemorino and Adina when the real truth dawns on them.

Laurent Pelly’s 2007 production of L'elisir d'amore returns to Covent Garden. It is a co-production with the Opéra National de Paris and has set designs by Chantal Thomas placing the action somewhere in the 1960’s Italy of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, although there is a something about the staging, a sort of sangfroid, that would keep us somewhere in the South of France if it wasn’t for all the Italian words on display. Joël Adam’s lighting design certainly isn’t sunny enough with the skies often grey and cloudy and the only visual ‘magic’ is when the stars come out (or rather down from the flies) to greet Adina and Nemorino finally admitting their love for each other.

Generally Pelly’s cinematic realism works against the bucolic charm that this story has. A gigantic haystack for clambering up and down dominates the opening of the opera and then a screen comes down that triumphs that Dulcamara’s products can cure everything from constipation to impotence and to the sound of chirruping crickets the set has to be changed stopping the action. It rises to reveal an open area in front of a roadside Trattoria. Everything is solidly three-dimensional including the large lorry that ‘itinerant quack’ – who here seems rather too successful – drives on to introduce himself (‘Udite, udite, o rustici’) to nobody in particular except a small dog that chases across the stage (and later back) to provide one of the few laughs in Act I. Everybody is passing by on their pushbikes and mopeds and not stopping so there is no sense of Donizetti’s ‘village’. Act II is set more simply with a small performing area and some bunting between two smaller haystacks and apart from the entry of a big tractor has few distractions focussing the audience’s attention better on the characters.

Ozzie the Jack Russell provided that only laugh-out-loud moment in Act I but matters do improve after the interval.  I think the comedy is now much broader than before with moments such as when all the confetti is poured over Adina by her two jiggling ‘bridesmaids’ to Dulcamara unbuttoning ready to pounce on Adina. Seeing the latter now it seems rather more comic - in a British ‘Carry On’ way - when in 2007 it appeared a somewhat lewd thing for the quack to do.

This opera is a star vehicle and needs exceptional singing-actors and if they cannot act that well then they must have engaging personalities. Adina needs a fresh-voiced lyric coloratura soprano, a bel canto tenor is wanted for Nemorino, a deep eloquent baritone for Belcore whose oleaginous personality must reach far across the footlights and finally, an exceptional buffo bass to bring Dulcamara to life. A difficult task to cast with the current generation of singers and the Royal Opera’s quartet are uneven to say the least.

Giannetta, so perkily sung by Kishani Jayasinghe in 2007, is a mere cipher here and Eri Nakamura does not create much of an impression. Anthony Michaels-Moore, who sang Belcore in the previous Covent Garden production in 1992, returns as  the swaggering braggart sergeant, an Inspector Clouseau figure with his ‘Little and Large’ platoon of two. His is an appealing assumption even if his voice doesn’t now have the notes at the bottom the role needs. Simone Alaimo is vastly experienced in the role of Dulcamara and he enjoys every minute of it although he must have sung it hundreds of times before. Pelly’s direction does not make a showstopper of his opening peddling patter song and the only fireworks here come off his lorry from which he sells the ‘elixir’. However in Act II when he prowls the stage in his red suit he totally connects with the audience through his expressive singing and vivid characterisation. His personality reminded me so much then of Geraint Evans who I saw in the role in the 1980s and that is high praise indeed.

In 2007 Aleksandra Kurzak sang a high-octane, self-assuredly sexy, Adina. Here Diana Damrau worked hard to make herself seem likeable but she did not seem a natural comedienne nor was she vivacious enough. Her voice has remarkable range and agility and she nails every note, so her voice has the perfect sound and expressiveness (anger, flirting, coaxing and passion as appropriate) for the role and it was just her personality that was the problem. With her tenor, Giuseppe Filianoti, I took issue with both his voice and his personality. He can be engaging enough and was best when he was ‘drunk’ in Act II but – and maybe it is also Pelly’s fault here – his naïve farm boy with romance in his heart is fairly charmless from the start in his arm-swirling over-eagerness of someone with an attention deficit disorder. I have heard singers like Gedda, Pavarotti and Kraus (Filianoti’s former teacher) sing Nemorino’s ‘Una furtive lagrima’ and while they were in the Premier league this was Second Division fare. His forthright voice already mangled some of the sweetness out of his role and in that famous romanza he crooned his way partly through it – not necessarily unpleasantly – but it was not as it should be sung either and the inelegant falsetto ending was totally inappropriate.

The Royal Opera House Orchestra was again on top form for Bruno Campanella who is an experience conductor of bel canto opera. His account was a bit stop-start and surprisingly spacious (for that read he indulged his singers) but there was a wealth of orchestral detail in the woodwinds and strings right from the start of the overture and by the end of Act II the music positively sparkled. Once again the chorus played an important part in the success of the performance with their usual total commitment to this high-spirited piece. The chorus director, Renato Balsadonna, deservedly brandished his own bottle of the Dulcamara’s special ‘elixir’ at the chorus’s curtain call.

Jim Pritchard

Picture © Johan Persson

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