from 02 to 25 November 2015
L’Elisir d’amore
Melodramma Giocoso in two acts (1832)
Music
Gaetano Donizetti
Libretto
Felice Romani
After Eugène Scribe's Le
Philtre based on Auber
In Italian
In Italian
Conductor
Director
Laurent Pelly
Assistant stage director
Michel Jankeliovitch
Adina
Nemorino
Belcore
Il Dottor Dulcamara
Giannetta
Costume design
Laurent Pelly
Set design
Lighting design
Dramaturgy
Agathe Mélinand
Chorus master
"WOULD YOU HAVE… BY CHANCE… THE LOVE POTION OF QUEEN ISOLDE?
- L’Elisir d’amore, Act I, scene 6
L'Elisir d'amore is to Donizetti what Il Barbiere di Siviglia is to
Rossini: his passport to eternal fame. Like his triumphant senior's comic
masterpiece, the score was completed in less than two weeks. However, success
was by no means assured: the composer was still recovering from a resounding
flop at Milan’s La Scala with Ugo, conte di Parigi. More importantly still,
Alessandro Lanari, impresario of the rival theatre, had nothing better to offer
him than “a German prima donna, a stuttering tenor, a buffo with the voice of a
goat and a fairly useless French basso, but whom we must thank."
Verdi’s music, his “vocal line sometimes brilliant, sometimes lively,
sometimes colourful”, to quote the fawningly sycophantic critic of the Gazzetta
di Milano, must have had a magical effect on his mediocre singers, rather like
that of Doctor Dulcamara’s famous elixir (in reality, a bottle of Bordeaux) on
Nemorino! Or perhaps the cast were not really as bad as all that! Or were
audiences immediately won over by that master alchemist's mix of comedy and
poetry whose charm has never ceased to work, particularly in the tenor’s aria
“una furtiva lagrima”. Besotted with Aleksandra Kurzak’s Adina, Roberto Alagna
is performing one of his favourite roles for the first time in Paris in this production
staged by Laurent Pelly.
https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/season-15-16/opera/lelisir-damore
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