Tender love story shines through in Irish National Opera's bawdy Wild West romance
Production of L'elisir d'amore is cartoonish yet sophisticated as it takes us on a whistle-stop tour through American cultural icons
Today at 12:56
Irish National Opera are determined to entertain you in this boisterous and delightful production of Donizetti's 1832 comic romance. It is libidinous, bawdy and brash, with great attention to detail, and a gag-a-minute aesthetic.
Sung in Italian with English surtitles, the show is improbably set in the Wild West. It takes a whistle-stop tour through American cultural icons: a couple of chorus members are got up as Laurel and Hardy; the hatchet-faced couple and their pitchfork from the painting American Gothic also feature; the leading man is dressed as Woody from Toy Story; and the leading lady appears in an array of the dresses from Gone With the Wind. Everything tumbles past at breakneck speed like a herd of stampeding buffalo, and there's a herd of stampeding buffalo too.
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