Drafted in at only a few weeks’ notice to spare the blushes of Milan’s Teatro Canobbiana in 1832, when their new season was suddenly missing its magic, Donizetti wasn’t above a bit of thrift to come up with a winning formula for L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love). Fluff, nonsense and a merry-go-round of delightfully rehashed tunes, this story of unlikely lovers brought together with the aid of a mysterious potion is hardly one of the great operas of the mind. No matter: with London now officially atwinkle, we are all in search of tinctures of one sort or another.
Harry Fehr’s directorial debut for English National Opera transposes Donizetti’s tale into a World War 2 setting, where an English country house has been requisitioned by the land army. Nicky Shaw’s meticulous set – from every copper-bottomed pan to every chintzy sofa – has us on very familiar territory, but the reframing of it all again as a television sitcom (there are animated Dad’s Army-esque titles on a giant vintage telly over the overture) feels like a clunky dose of well worn wartime nostalgia. In this sensible atmosphere of make-do-and-mend, it takes a while for novelty to assert itself.
Adina (Rhian Lois) is lady of the manor, now land army canteen, where pacifist Nemorino (Thomas Atkins) nurses a languishing heart beneath his fair-isle tank top. Belcore (Dan D’Souza), the worse for Nemorino, leads a dashing delegation from Bomber Command and Adina, perhaps gambling on her self-important suitor’s chances of survival not being quite as high as he thinks they are, means to seize the day. Of course, nobody has reckoned on the arrival of either pharmaceutical black marketeer Dulcamara (Brandon Cedel) or the sensational news, deliciously delivered to a very excited female chorus by Segomotso Shupinyaneng as Gianetta, that, following the death of his uncle, Nemorino (unbeknownst to Adina) is now a millionaire. When suddenly Nemorino is elevated from “stupid idiot’’ (one of the more successful phrases in Amanda Holden’s translation that, while faithful, lacks some of the effervescent silliness of the Italian) to most sought-after man in the village, Adina can’t help but take notice. Fehr says in the programme note that he wants, in his portrayal of Nemorino and Belcore, to present two opposing faces of masculinity for Adina to choose from. But whatever Fehr’s intention, Adina’s volte face demonstrates what anyone who has ever spent any time researching elixirs this close to Christmas knows: we can all fall prey to the power of advertising.
As every nubile landlady must, Lois charms and commands as Adina, her vocal agility matched by a brilliant, diamantine tone and her joyous embrace of melodrama. Cedel’s Dulcamara arrives with his dubious entourage just in time to lift a first half in which excitement has been too long on the ration, unpacks his box of tricks with éclat and gives the chorus plenty to do as they eagerly test his wares. Cedel’s is the fastest moving moustache in Spivdom as he rattles through the unimpeachable qualities of his vast assortment of medicinal peculiars; it was all conductor Teresa Riveiro Böhm could do to keep the lid on the excitement bubbling up from the pit.
Atkins, clearly enjoying every minute of Nemorino’s tiresome dweebery, nevertheless held back, even though that sometimes meant that the orchestra overpowered his more understated moments. However, once confident after the interval that Dulcamara’s potion had taken effect, he absolutely milked “Una furtiva lagrima”, and rightly so. With a voice of such spacious range, we may as well all enjoy it, and for all its showstopping indulgence, the aria proved the perfect balancing point of the opera. Yes, we are watching a ludicrous fiction, but the emotions depicted are real and common to us all.
Largely authoritative vocally, D’Souza’s Belcore didn’t quite exude the physical confidence that Bomber Command, not to mention the libretto, would have hoped for – a directorial opportunity for a more nuanced characterisation missed, perhaps – though this might be asking too much; after all, Belcore will take Adina’s ultimate defection on the chin and go to look elsewhere. However, his duet with Nemorino, in which Belcore interjects his rival’s doubts about enlisting with the enticing refrain “thirty shillings”, was a highlight, with both men’s voices, text and music coming together perfectly, while various physical jerks – increasingly unlikely to be found in any RAF training manual – were demonstrated to the new recruit. Perhaps there were wartime restrictions I don’t know about, or perhaps they were stage management challenges in a show that, after all, ends in a riot. But if you line up three RAF men at the front of the stage to open bottles of champagne on someone’s wedding day, you really ought to let them pop their corks.
