Donizetti's Elisir d'Amore at the Royal Opera House
I don't often go to the opera - last time I went was in New York over a year ago, to see Karita Mattila in Fidelio. Don't worry, I didn't actually go in order to to go the opera. I just happened to be there, with my fab friend Joslin, who was on the Met's young artists programme at the time.
Anyway... I was persuaded by another more-operatic-than-moi friend, Harriet, to go to the Garden last night to see Donizetti's Elisir d'Amore. I went along happily enough, with thoughts of a cool fino in mind at the fancy bar they have at the ROH, but also with slight trepidation because the idea of Donizetti (not that I'd knowingly heard any of his stuff before) and the idea of an opera about a love potion (not that I knew anything about this work) encouraged me to think I was going to see pure, twiddly and unamusing and empty nonsense with a vaguely pleasant sound.
Well, it wasn't like that. The music wasn't deeply introspective and meaningful, like Mahler and the other things I usually listen to: no. But it was more than pleasant, and may have cured me of the tendency to totally diss out people like Donizetti. The play? A silly story it was, sure enough - but not silly enough to have an actual love potion, which I liked. Actually I was fascinated by the way Adina's first aria gets the story of Tristan and Isolde wrong: he didn't deliberately take the potion to win her love - at least, not in the Gottfried von Strassburg mediaeval German version and I'm sure not in Beroul's mediaeval French, either. The potion was actually meant for Isolde and her husband to be, King Mark of Cornwall - Tristan somehow took it by accident. It's a good example of the way mediaeval myth and storytelling may be more psychologically real than we give it credit for - love may be accidental, and inconvenient, and break out where it's not wanted, like an illness.
But I'm digressing again. The set was fabulous, really making you feel you were in village Italy at harvest time, and costumes and lighting all contributed to that unified vision. But what really astounded was the singing, which was top-drawer all round. Aleksandra Kurzak was just amazing as Adina, and stole the show - which a singer can do in opera of course, even if her part, were it unsung, would be a supporting one. Dmitry Korchak, Ludovic Tézier and Paolo Gavanelli were great too, as Nemorino, Belcore and Dulcamara.
Excellent! I mustn't leave it so long again.
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