National Opera stages English version of Donizetti's Elixir

This weekend, National Opera will serve Canberrans a favourite tipple, grown in Italy’s musical vineyards: Gaetano Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.

This is a ‘pocket version’, sung in English, and half the length of the full Elisir d’amore. “All the best bits put together,” says director Ylaria Rogers. Including a famous tenor aria.

At 75 minutes, it’s enough to make one merry, but won’t leave opera novices with that hungover ‘morning after’ feeling.

“This shorter version makes opera more accessible to a broader audience who needn’t have seen it before,” Rogers said.

“If you’re new to opera, or looking at dipping your toes into opera, this is a really perfect format,” conductor Leonard Weiss agrees.

Elisir was the prolific Donizetti’s 37^th opera, out of nearly 70, and the fourth he composed in 1832 alone. While the three other operas Donizetti wrote that year are melodramas about forbidden love, murder, and madness in royal families, Elisir is a rom com.

Portrait of the composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). Found in the Collection of Museo Teatrale alla Scala. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Nemorino (‘Little Nobody’), a nice but simple guy, loves the smart Adina, who won’t admit her feelings for him. Is she outside his league? Worse, Nemorino has a rival in the swaggering soldier Belcore (the jock type). When a quack doctor, Dr Dulcamara, arrives selling what he claims are magic love potions, Nemorino hopes he has found the answer to his problems.

“There are moments of love and heartbreak and earnestness and connectedness, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously,” Rogers says. “It’s humorous. It gives the performers a chance to have fun, and the audience can get on for the ride, I hope.”

Underneath the surreal comedy, Weiss says, the characters’ emotions are deeply sincere. “Who you see at the beginning and at the end of the opera are in some ways the same people, but you get to delve further and further into their psyches. … It’s exceptional craftsmanship from Donizetti – he was such a brilliant opera composer.”

Rogers has set the opera in a Bohemian café-library. “To create this Bohemian world for two nights in Albert Hall is pretty special,” she said.

She wanted the warmth of lower-class characters who love life and enjoy every moment of the day. Adina is the queen of this artistic world, and Nemorino idolises her. Rogers promises a couple of magical moments around the creation of the elixir and selling this plot device – “A bit silly and fun in a melodramatic world.”

Rogers founded Heart Strings Theatre Co., Canberra’s first semi-professional theatre company, in 2021; many will have seen its début production, Urinetown The Musical, last year. But the classical sound is different from musicals’ Broadway belt.

“Listening to 25 chorus members in a small room, the sound quality was beautiful, incredible, warm,” Rogers said.

Great musical, awful title: ‘Urinetown’ comes to Canberra Theatre (6 July 2022)

All the chorus are Canberrans; so are most of the cast. (National Opera prides itself on working with local artists, Weiss explains.)

Soprano Sarah Darnley-Stuart, who sings the commanding Adina, comes from the ACT; Rogers worked with her a decade ago in musical theatre. “Adina is such a big sing,” Weiss said, “and she makes it look really easy when she’s onstage driving all the action for so much of the show.”

Bass Sitiveni Talei (the swashbuckling Belcore), a member of Opera Australia, is another Canberran. “An amazing asset for us,” Weiss said, “he has this incredible charm to him … and musically [he is] incredibly skilful.”

So is mezzo Elsa Huber (Giannetta, Adina’s best friend), whom Weiss taught at ANU. “It’s exciting to see her growing legs as a professional musician, and to support that journey as well.”

The other principals – tenor Daniel Verschuer (Nemorino) and bass-baritone Matthew Avery (Dr Dulcamara) – are emerging artists from Sydney. Weiss heard both sing with Pacific Opera: “They have so much skill and wonderful voices.”

“It’s an amazing team of people who are not only very musically skilled, but also have a lot of dramatic experience, who know how to embrace a character, and make their onstage personality interesting and convincing,” Weiss said.

Weiss himself is a rapidly rising conductor – NZ Assistant Conductor in Residence last year; part of the Australian Conducting Academy, mentored by the chief conductors of Australian orchestras, this year and next. Two months ago, he worked with Riccardo Muti on a Tokyo production of Verdi’s Ballo in maschera (“The most inspiring experience of my whole life”). Later this year, as part of his Churchill Fellowship, he will assist the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with a performance in Carnegie Hall, New York.

This is his third time with National Opera: he conducted the pocket version of Mozart’s Così fan tutte last year, and was assistant conductor for the company’s inaugural production, La clemenza di Tito, in 2021.

His favourite aria is Nemorino’s ‘Una furtiva lagrima’, sung towards the end of the opera, when Nemorino realises that Adina cares for him.

“It’s rightly incredibly famous,” Weiss said. “Musically, it’s really splendid; the character has a tremendous amount of depth; it’s not so surface-level as you would think. We have this really friendly, essentially comic opera; everything’s a little bit farcical in that the setting’s surreal and overexaggerated emotionally. We know the opera works out fine; we could have Nemorino sing something joyful … but instead we see five minutes from him of genuine heartbreak and sincere love for Adina. He’s been pining for her affection for the whole show because he seriously has feelings, not just because it’s his only mode.”

There are some wonderful trios and quartets, too, Weiss says. In the Act II ensemble, ‘Dell’elisir mirabile’, “the characters come together, and get these interweaving lines on top of each other. Giannetta has this most beautiful line that she interweaves with Adina that is really high and feels so effortless. … [The ensemble shows] the characters’ emotional driving force at this point of the show. We get a real glimpse of how all the characters work in isolation and how they bounce off each other together.”

The principals have studied their roles and the chorus have rehearsed for a couple of months; all the singers have come together in what Rogers calls a “whirlwind” fortnight of rehearsals, ready for the three shows this Thursday and Saturday.

“It’s a fantastic piece of art,” Weiss said. “To really see and understand a glimpse of our humanity reflected in these characters, and in their journey, is so insightful and important. It’s better drama than Netflix, shall we say? There is a genuine drive to each of these people guised in this comic opera format, but it is 90 minutes of serious emotions and interactions that happen to be packaged with beautiful music in an opera format.”

“People should walk away feeling like they’ve seen something beautiful, magical, and just enjoyable,” Rogers said. “The music’s great; it’s going to be fun; there’s going to be laughs; it should be warm.”

As Dr Dulcamara boasts of his wares, the Elixir can make the old feel young, set the dead on their feet, and put a smile on the faces of the miserable.

Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love – A Pocket Opera will be performed at Albert Hall on Thursday 11 (6pm) and Saturday 13 May (2pm and 6pm). Tickets: adults: $55; concession: $45; full-time students: $20; under 18: $10. For more information, visit nationalopera.org.au/elixir-of-love-a-pocket-opera/.

National Opera stages English version of Donizetti’s Elixir

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