L'elisir d'amore, Garsington, review: a delightful picture-perfect fantasy

Telegraph

29-05-2025

Donizetti's ever-green comedy The Elixir of Love is one of those operas that resists heavy-handed directorial intervention. Sure, you could choose to highlight the grinding poverty of the Italian village where the action takes place, and emphasise the vast social gulf between Adina, the flighty landowner who rejects the hopeless passion of the peasant Nemorino, and the girls who develop a crush on Nemorino once they learn he's inherited a fortune. In this new production, director Christopher Luscombe wisely goes the other way, offering a realisation of such perfect picture-postcard fantasy you can only sigh with pleasure.
Designer Simon Higlett evokes an Italian village square in the late 1940s in painstaking detail, complete with potted flowers, an old-fashioned petrol pump and fading marriage-and-funeral stickers on the ancient hotel walls. The Yanks are still in the vicinity, as we learn when Sergeant Belcore, the rival to the hapless Nemorino, turns up in one of those army motorcycle-plus-sidecars we remember from old war films. The quack doctor Dulcamara arrives in a Fiat of bright red vulgarity, and Adina herself has a spotless white Vespa—which perfectly captures the 'real but not real' feeling of the evening.
The production could have coasted along on the beauty of the set, the beautiful playing from the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted with pert stylishness by Chloe Rooke—and Donizetti's immortal melodies. But there's a core of tender feeling at the heart of the comic froth, and the performers draw it out with some subtle acting. Adina's rejection of Nemorino in the famous aria where she compares her freedom to the winds can seem like 'Look, I'm a b----, just get over it,' but American soprano Madison Leonard lets Nemorino down with affecting gentleness. We know from the beginning she'll come round, which isn't the case in every production.
Ukrainian tenor Oleksiy Palchykov is a Nemorino of affecting ardour, whose naïve passion for Adina inspires feats of bodily as well as vocal agility. The moment when he leapt several feet to embrace her brought an audible gasp of astonishment. Nemorino's rival Belcore can sometimes come over as harsh in his temporary triumph over Nemorino, but in Spanish baritone Carles Pachon's winning performance he seems good-natured under his vanity. Richard Burkhard's Dulcamara is less strong vocally, but he has a winning sly roguishness.
Sharing the honours are the excellent chorus. Their naïve enthusiasm for Dulcamara's magic potions and lusty celebration of the eventually aborted wedding of Adina and Belcore are all enacted with choreographed precision, nicely directed by Rebecca Howell. In all, the evening offers a charming fantasy, leavened with moments of emotional truth. If I have one complaint it's that the singing, though athletically impressive, is not as refined as the acting. The principals tended to sing with huge force, as if they were trying to fill the Met Opera in New York. It compromised their sound, and it's hardly necessary in Garsington's modest dimensions. Only in Nemorino's famous Furtive Tear aria are we treated to some vocal delicacy on a par with the production's other delights.