photo by Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera
Diana Damrau & Juan Diego Flórez
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This month, the Metropolitan Opera is bidding a fond “addio” to its 20-year-old, cartoonish, John Copley and Beni Montresor trappings for Gaetano Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore,” to be replaced by a new Bartlett Sher/Michael Yeargan/Catherine Zuber production, starring Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani, which opens the Met’s next season, on September 24. The Met is giving the current “Elisir”—which had replaced one by Nathaniel Merrill and Robert O’Hearn, in which Dr. Dulcamara memorably entered and exited in a hot air balloon, like that other loveable charlatan, the Wizard of Oz—an especially strong send-off, mostly newly cast with leading bel canto singers, paced by an experienced returning maestro, who knows his way around a Donizetti opera. The season premiere of “Elisir” took place on March 5 and the second of its eight performances, on March 9, is the one considered in this review.
Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Flórez, the new supremely self-confident Adina and bumbling, but boyishly handsome Nemorino, have been paired here in “La Fille du Régiment,” “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and “Le Comte Ory” and, in Barcelona, in “Linda di Chamounix.” A playful rapport between them is evident, as it is again in “Elisir.” Most of their assignments, in the aforementioned operas, lie higher than their roles here, but both get opportunities to strut their stuff in the stratosphere via well-placed high cadenzas and individual interpolated high notes. Most notable of these is her high cadenza before the ensemble with Nemorino, Dulcamara, Giannetta and the chorus, in Act Two, when the other women are courting Nemorino’s attention, after they learn, even before he does, that his rich uncle has died and left him a handsome legacy, and his triumphant top tone as he trades signed enlistment papers for ready cash from Belcore. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his crowing, in showy song and fancy dance moves—‘moves like Jagger?’—during the “Esulti pur la barbara” duet with Damrau, when he expects the ‘elixir of love’ to work its magic soon, for him, on her.
Within this comedy are scenes of true pathos, and Flórez makes the most of elegiac arias “Adina, credimi,” when he would have Adina delay her marriage to Belcore, kicking off a grand concerted ensemble of the stature of the sextet from “Lucia,” and, of course, “Una furtive lagrima,” which nets him a well-merited sustained ovation, during which, to his credit, his never breaks character. Damrau’s own serious moment to shine is her sincerely loving “Prendi; per me sei libero,” when, finally having gauged the depth of Nemorino’s love for her, returns his signed military contract to him, having bought his freedom, and declares, as well, her feeling for him.
Mariusz Kwiecien makes a suitably swaggering, pompously commanding Sergeant Belcore, surely the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim’s Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, the brainless braggart, who is Desiree Armfeldt’s soldier lover in “A Little Night Music.” When Flórez’s Nemorino uses Kwiecien’s back as a table, on which to sign his X on his enlistment paper, however, he makes sure the Sergeant, his superior and rival, feels those two crossed pen lines cutting into him. Kwiecien will be the Belcore of the new production, in the fall, as well.
Returning to the role of Dr. Dulcamara, the quack whose miraculous elixir is no more than Bordeaux wine, Alessandro Corbelli continues to be a buffo presence to reckon with. Though lacking the most lushly imposing baritone in which to swathe “Udite, udite, o rustici,” his entrance aria, and his solo in the finale, when Corbelli joins Flórez and Damrau in duets, they are definitely meetings of pros. When Damrau and Corbelli portray the prudent “La Nina Gondoliera” (Nina, the gondolier) and the doddering “il Senator Tredenti” (Senator Three-teeth), in the second act barcarolle, they both cut additional distinctive characters.
Lovely young soprano Layla Claire makes it clear that her Giannetta is an Adina-in-training and, when Adina jilts Belcore for Nemorino, dons the latter’s cast-off military jacket and makes her own play for the Sergeant.
It is my impression that conductor Donato Renzetti, absent from the Met podium for more than two decades, restores some dark, emphatically minor phrases for the chorus, just before Dulcamara’s entrance and at the opening of Act Two, but does not include a second verse of Adina’s second act cabaletta. Joshua Greene is the recitative accompanist. Did I hear a sly hint of Wagner when Nemorino inquires if the doctor’s elixir is the love potion “della regina Isotta?”
Remaining performances of “L’Elisir d’Amore,” at this writing, are on March 12, 16 and 21 at 7:30 p.m., 24 at 8:30 p.m., 27 at 7:30 p.m., and 31 at 1 p.m., with the matinee broadcast over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network. For tickets, priced from $25 to $345, visit www.metopera.org, telephone 212/362-6000, or visit the Met box office in Lincoln Center on Monday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., or Sunday, from noon to 6 p.m. Discounted rush tickets are available, on the day of performance, as well.