 Dr Dulcamara’s stock of “love elixir” |
(L’elisir d’amore) by Gaetano DonizettiLibretto by Felice RomaniNew English translation by Guy Davenport & Tom Higgins New performing edition by Tom Higgins Performed at Haslemere Hall 20th to 24th February 2007 About the opera |
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Cast
The Opera South Chorus
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About the opera
The story
Act 1
Nemorino is hopelessly in love with Adina, a young lady of the village who is somewhat aloof. Unfortunately, Nemorino is shy and modest and cannot find the courage to declare his love. He watches as Adina, encouraged by the villagers, reads the love story in which Tristan takes a magic potion that makes Isolde fall in love with him.
A small squad of soldiers, led by the pompous Sergeant Belcore arrives. Belcore immediately makes overtures to Adina, and asks her to marry him. Nemorino despairs whilst Adina, coquettishly, informs Belcore that her heart cannot be won. When Belcore departs, Nemorino declares his love for Adina but she makes it very clear that she is not interested. Doctor Dulcamara, a self styled doctor and magician, storms into the sleepy village. He offers his “world famous” elixir to the locals promising a cure for every ailment, known and unknown. Nemorino, remembering Tristan and Isolde, asks if Dulcamara has `that elixir'. A bottle is sold to him with the promise that within a couple of days (by which time Dulcamara will be well on his way) the elixir will have taken effect. Nemorino drinks the entire bottle of what turns out to be nothing more than cheap wine and becomes merry and self assured, much to Adina's disquiet. Belcore returns to woo Adina who agrees to marry him in six days time. However, the soldiers receive orders to leave the next day and Belcore immediately calls for everyone to join him at a wedding feast so that his marriage to Adina can be celebrated before he leaves. Nemorino is in despair, for the potion will not work in time.
Act 2
Preparations for the wedding feast are in full swing when Dulcamara invites Adina to join him in a Barcarolle in which a young maiden has to choose between the fickle nature of love or the certainty of riches. Confused, she wishes Nemorino could be there and she delays the ceremony until the evening. Nemorino is sure that more elixir will make Adina love him and is paid a guinea for enlisting in the army and spends it on another bottle of elixir. In the meantime news reaches Giannetta and the girls of the village that Nemorino's rich uncle has died, naming Nemorino as his heir. Totally unaware of this, Nemorino assumes that the attention now being paid to him is due to the love potion. Adina, also unaware of the news, cannot understand Nemorino's new popularity. Seeing him in a new light, she falls in love. Adina learns from Dulcamara that Nemorino has enlisted in the army and, buying back Nemorino's enlistment papers, seeks to find him and declares her love. Dulcamara is himself convinced that the elixir he sold Nemorino can do amazing things and the villagers, equally convinced, clamour for his potions as he leaves, certain of his genius, to visit another sleepy English village.The director’s perspective
Coming to Opera South for The Elixir of Love has brought me full circle, as it was the English singer and director Joseph Ward who gave me my first break as his assistant on a production of L'elisir d'amore when I was still at university. It is an opera that I've always enjoyed and I have been delighted to be able to return to it.
In putting together this new production, our thoughts began with Dulcamara and Nemorino. We wanted to find a period less sceptical than our own, not a time of iPods and internet scams but a time where travelling salesmen spruiked their wares in the town square and where the young were a little more naive. It also needed to be an era where the sight of soldiers marching into town would not be a startling experience. We found that country England in the 1920S suited this very well and it has enabled the characters and chorus to inhabit a world that the audience can relate to while still allowing Donizetti's original story to be told.
Visual inspiration and references have come from a number of places including the paintings of Paul Cezanne and Paul Nash, but mainly from the local area surrounding Fernhurst and Haslemere. It was on a drive back to the designer John Braithwaite's home that I came across Fernhurst Green for the first time, with its row of charming historic houses, lush cricket field and inviting pub. That was it, I was sold. (Although you may note that the original name was Farnhurst).
I have enjoyed working with this new English edition of Elixir. It is never an easy task to translate a comedy whilst keeping the musical line flowing and 'singable' but Guy Davenport and Tom Higgins have done a superb job.
Maria Callas was once quoted as saying ` “An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down.” It has been a pleasure bringing The Elixir of Love to the stage.
Ian MacKenzie-Thurley
February 2007