L'elisir d'amore

Village peasant Nemorino loves Adina. But why would the beautiful, confident, wealthy landowner ever look at the boy next door? When travelling quack Doctor Dulcamara rolls into town, Nemorino asks him for a love potion to help woo the woman of his dreams. But the doctor’s magical elixir is not all as it first appears… Of the almost 70 operas that Gaetano Donizetti composed in his prolific career, L’elisir d’amore (1832) remains one of the most enduringly popular and most often performed. Composed in just a few months, after a last-minute commission from Milan, this early work has an ebullient, youthful energy that’s balanced with real tenderness. In turning the Cinderella story on its head (Nemorino literally means “little nobody”), Donizetti created an unusual hero, far from the usual swaggering 19th-century tenor lead. The opera is a colourful patchwork of musical styles. There are comic patter-songs for Dulcamara, mock military marches for the soldier Belcore, dazzling virtuosity for Adina and simpler almost folk-like ballads for Nemorino, including the opera’s most famous aria, “Una furtiva lagrima”. Here, accompanied by a plangent solo bassoon, Nemorino moves from despair to joy in one of Donizetti’s most ravishing melodies as he realises that Adina may yet love him back. Other highlights include Adina’s retelling of the myth of Tristan and Isolde, “Della crudele Isotta”, and Dulcamara’s irresistible musical tongue twister “Udite, udite, O rustici!”