For
the second time this year, the Royal Opera has hit the jackpot with a Donizetti
comedy. Back in January, it was the Italian composer's zany French farce La Fille du Rigiment, with starry vocal leads in
Natalie Dessay, as the tomboyish daughter of the
regiment, and Juan Diego Florez, flinging out top Cs
with effortless abandon. The production was the work of the Frenchman Laurent Pelly and his regular set designer, Chantal Thomas, who
now, with even greater success, return to stage Donizetti's comic masterpiece,
his charming melodramma giocoso L'Elisir
d'Amore.
...The Mexican
tenor Rolando Villazon was to have sung the lovesick
farm boy, Nemorino - who pines for his
capricious and aloof employer, the farm's owner, Adina, and seeks the aid of a
potion-purveying travelling quack to boost his
amorous assault on her affections - but Villazon
has cancelled all engagements until the end of the year.
... Although
L'elisir d'amore is now
regarded as a vehicle for a star tenor - it was a favourite
of the late Luciano Pavarotti, to whose memory the
present run is dedicated - it wasn't written as such. The four principal
roles are of equal importance, even though the tenor has the most melting and
memorable tunes, including one of the 19th century's "chart-toppers",
"Una furtiva lagrima" (One furtive tear), which stands as the
prolific composer's greatest popular hit.
...This bucolic
romantic comedy has been updated to the mid-20th century, but again we are
on Italian terra firma: at curtain rise, Adina basks in the sun on a huge
ziggurat-shaped haystack, over which the principals and chorus frolic and
cavort with the agility of mountain goats. The humour
relies to some extent on national stereotyping, but it's unmalicious:
as this is late 1940s or early 1950s rural Italy, all the young men whizz around the stage on bikes and Vespas,
and hang around in packs, watching the girls and pinching their bottoms given
the chance. The shy Nemorino is the exception, even
though Adina provocatively wiggles hers at him, until his inhibitions are
loosened by Dr Dulcamara's faux elixir, a couple of
bottles of Bordeaux.
His charms for the local girls are enhanced by an even more powerful
aphrodisiac: a millionaire's inheritance from a deceased uncle, of which he is
blissfully ignorant.
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...Pelly's
updating yields rich comic dividends: Dulcamara's
lorry is kitted out with a surgery, but it is also a mobile home with a sun
deck, and the biggest, most spontaneous laugh of the evening comes when the
doctor pauses to boast of his reputation "all over the world and, er . . . in other places", and a frisky jack russell gallops across the stage. This is an evening full
of such delightful surprises: feelgood opera, for
sure, but blocked and choreographed with the kind of slick virtuosity that one
expects in the singing of a bel canto opera, but
rarely in a staging.
The Royal Opera
cast scores highest with its low voices: the French baritone Ludovic Tizier looks dashing in
his uniform and sings eloquently as Adina's nar-cissistic
admirer, Sgt Belcore, and Paolo Gavanelli,
arguably the only authentic Verdi baritone around at present, recalls his
Falstaff here with his burgeoning girth, voluminous voice " richer
than the greying buffo bass one invariably hears in
this part " and wonderfully trenchant Italian diction. He's a
larger-than-life personality who fits perfectly into the role of a spivvy charlatan on the make. His youthful countryman,
Stefano Secco, Villazon's
replacement, makes Nemorino a bubbling caul-dron of hormonal hyperactivity. He is only 28 "
Pavarotti's age when he made his Covent Garden
debut " and if his voice lacks the juicy ping of his late compatriot's, he
compensates with stylish musical phrasing and winning charm...