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Telegraph
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
L'elisir d'amore, Garsington, review: a delightful picture-perfect fantasy
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.
Irish Independent
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
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.
Irish Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
L'Elisir d'Amore review: A perfectly OTT Claudia Boyle sings thrillingly in INO's winningly slapstick take on Donizetti
L'Elisir d'Amore Gaiety Theatre, Dublin ★★★★★ Irish National Opera is closing its season with six nights – four in Dublin plus one each in Wexford and Cork – of comic opera, a genre in which the seven-year-old company already has a really good record. Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore feels like a ball not to be dropped. Its popularity and permanent place in the repertory have their roots in the fact that for an entire decade, from 1838 to 1848, it was the most performed opera in Italy. But comedy gives a ball a unique slipperiness – think about the unfunny flops of stage and screen that we've all cringed through or abandoned. Therefore, to complete the slam dunk that L'Elisir d'Amore promises on paper, INO has entrusted its season finale to Cal McCrystal , a director for whom comedy is a speciality. This is his first production for INO. He had never seen L'Elisir d'Amore before. And the audience laughs. I laugh. 'A good comedy,' McCrystal remarks in the production's programme, 'is where people laugh hard and a bad comedy is when they sit quietly tittering. I like big loud laughs.' And it's big laughs that he secures with a comic modus operandi that is unapologetically physical, visual slapstick. READ MORE Once or twice as I'm laughing I find myself wondering, Who isn't? Who is disappointed? Disgusted? And there are indeed moments when comic antics threaten to undermine the music and cross a line that McCrystal acknowledges but likes to approach. But those moments are seldom. Although McCrystal's relocation of the story to the American wild west has been done before, styling Nemorino as Woody from Disney's Toy Story is probably a first. When he first appears I think ahead to act two and wonder how the cartoon-cowboy look might diminish the emotional impact of the opera's most famous and non-comic aria, Una Furtiva Lagrima. But by then the agile and sweet-toned tenor Duke Kim has endeared himself as the story's lovable, love-struck hero. We don't care what he's wearing, and the song hits home. L'Elisir d'Amore: Claudia Boyle. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh L'Elisir d'Amore: Duke Kim and Claudia Boyle. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh L'Elisir d'Amore: Gianluca Margheri. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh American Gothic: L'Elisir d'Amore: Photograph: Ros Kavanagh Kim is surpassed in vocal agility by the neat and thrilling coloratura of the soprano Claudia Boyle , as Adina. Crucially, Boyle also brings an excellent comic presence as she flaunts her numerous costume changes, each more Scarlett O'Hara than the last. She is perfectly OTT, as is the bass Gianluca Margheri, as the alpha-male love rival Sergeant Belcore, the unabashed display of whose gym-chiselled torso makes us all wither with despair on Nemorino's behalf. Funniest of all is INO's always dependable funny man John Molloy, less than a year on from his hard-hitting depiction of the Older Man in Trade , Emma O'Halloran's gritty two-hander. As Dulcamara, the charlatan purveyor of the titular love potion, Molloy is consistently comic in gesture and inflection. Conducting, Erina Yashima keeps the music light-footed and lively, ably co-ordinating her large, busy chorus, where McCrystal has embedded so much funny dancing and caricature. He and the designer Sarah Bacon must have had a blast slipping in Laurel and Hardy, Abraham Lincoln, soldiers as Keystone Kops, and the grim-faced couple from American Gothic, Grant Wood's 1930 painting. L'Elisir d'Amore, staged by Irish National Opera , is at the Gaiety Theatre , Dublin, on Tuesday, May 27th, Thursday, May 29th, and Saturday, May 31st; at the National Opera House , Wexford, on Wednesday, June 4th; and at Cork Opera House on Saturday, June 7th
Al Etihad
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Etihad
Jessica Pratt and Javier Camarena perform opera gala at Abu Dhabi Festival
17 Apr 2025 23:49 ABU DHABI (ALETIHAD)The Abu Dhabi Festival has presented some world-class acts this year and this weekend is no the Red Theater at NYUAD's Art Center on Saadiyat Island, this Sunday, April 20, at 7.30pm, star soprano Jessica Pratt and top tenor Javier Camarena bring their artistry to a thrilling opera gala with the Korean National University of Arts Symphony Orchestra conducted by Toufic Maatouk. Hailed by the New York Times as possessing "gleaming sound, free and easy high notes, agile coloratura runs and lyrical grace", British-born Pratt is one of today's most admired interpreters of the Bel Canto repertoire. Mexican Opera star Camarena was recognised as Male Singer of the Year by the International Opera Awards in 2021and has made a name for himself in operas by Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti and Mozart. Together, they will perform arias and duets from Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Mascagni, Massenet and Verdi. Maatouk has earned global recognition for leading ensembles around the world and has been praised for his insightful direction and consummate command of the orchestra.
