The Elisir d’Amore by Gaetano Donizetti is a very popular work and, therefore, successful productions are also taken up to better amortize the costs of staging, an essential operation in these years of lean cows. At La Fenice, for example, a beautiful edition (directed by Bepi Morassi and the sets and costumes by Gianmaurio Fercioni ) is re-proposed almost every season, traditional but captivating. In Palermo we saw the staging curated by Damiano Michieletto (sets by Paolo Fantin , costumes by Silvia Aymonino ): the small community of a village in the Basque and distant countryside.
THE STAGE PRODUCTION IN ROME
We are on a beach in Almodovar Spain before the financial crisis: bright colors, water slides, flirting couples and, above all, many, many people on stage. In Rome and on stage until May 14, the co-production (with the San Francisco Opera) of the work that shows off, for the scenic action, a team (Ruggero Cappuccio for the direction, Nicola Rubertelli for the sets and Carlo Poggolio for the costumes) who comes from the experimental theater of Campania, a highly experienced musical director (Donato Renzetti) and four interpreters of who belong to the young generation of theater in music, Rosa Feola, Alessandro Luongo, Adrian Sempretrean and above all Antonio Poli.
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Foto di Corrado Maria Falsini
PRIMA E SECONDA EDIZIONE
The first edition is very traditional. The second is innovative but questionable. The third is original, conceived as a ‘portable’ show with an essential scenography capable of adapting to various types of stage, so much so that some reviewers thought that the story had been transferred to a circus. To me it seems instead to take place in a sunny Campania village (perhaps, given the colors, near Benevento) full of clowns and jugglers and where Dulcamara arrives masked by Renato Brunetta (who has never lacked a sense of humor).
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Photo by Luciano Romano
THE POLITICS
Before commenting on the Roman edition, it is useful to mention the politics of L’Elisir d’Amore, a subject never discussed but not so strange if in the distant September 1994 Ugo Gregoretti put an updated version of it today and among whose protagonists were Silvio Berlusconi, Giuliano Ferrara, Gianni Letta and Gianni Pilo – all characters then (and at least three of the four also now) with important public roles. Dove and the politicsof a masterpiece composed in two weeks for a small Milanese theater (that of the Canobiana) by a mature Donizetti but already with the disease that took him to an asylum and to early death after frantically composed 69 works as well as a huge number of scores for chamber musician , church music and who-more-has-more-more-about
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT
Not so much in the piece by Eugene Scribe from which the opera is based but from the way in which Felice Romani wrote the libretto and Donizetti the musician. Often considered a comic opera, and seasoned with jokes and jokes (an error that Capuccio also falls into but which brings the audience into the room), and a “playful melodrama”, of the same genre as semi-series operas such as La Gazza Ladra, Nina Pazza per Amore by Paisiello, Lodoiska by Mair, La Sonnambula by Bellini. It was a very popular musical theater genre in the early 19th century. Donizetti himself composed numerous semi-series works including Linda of Chamonix and Il Furioso on the Island of San Domingo (often staged in the United States during the troubled end of the Nixon Presidency and the war in Viet-Nam). The genre appealed to the public precisely because times were difficult (wars, revolutions, political and social tensions) as it combined drama with moments of comic escape. The work dates back to 1832; Scribe’s work of a little more than a year earlier, the year of the movements vividly described by Victor Hugo in the last chapters of Les Miserables. In staging L’Elisir it is necessary to take into account how the dramatic and ironic (never comic) elements are embroidered as in a lace.
THE PLOT
Starting from a banal assumption (an alleged magical filter that arouses the reactions of an inexperienced village), naivety and poetry meet with a balanced game of parts. The Adina-Nemorino duo is not the stereotype of traditional lovers but has a natural human dimension. The Belcore-Dulcamara duo is full of imaginative and good-natured irony. Above all, Donizetti enjoyed putting the Seriametastasian opera in derision, then still in fashion in certain theaters and social classes. He also takes by the nose the new enriched bourgeoisie (from the “landowner” Adina and the distant rich uncle of Nemorino), as well as the armies that became arrogant during the Napoleonic wars (and remained so after them) and the barking politicians who end up believing in what they promise. A painting, therefore, of a society both in crisis and in transition. For this reason, the orchestral balance is unstable with the winds (mainly the trombones) which tend to overwhelm the other instruments and at certain moments to cover the actor singers. And from the vocal point of view, we gradually pass from the initial duet to the great aria ‘larmoyante’ (i.e. in lacrime) for tenor (Una futiva lacrima) to the short but delicious rondo for soprano. Music also becomes political in this comedy between the larmoyant and the ironic. And from the vocal point of view, we gradually pass from the initial duet to the great aria ‘larmoyante’ (i.e. in lacrime) for tenor (Una futiva lacrima) to the short but delicious rondo for soprano. Music also becomes political in this comedy between the larmoyant and the ironic. And from the vocal point of view, we gradually pass from the initial duet to the great aria ‘larmoyante’ (i.e. in lacrime) for tenor (Una futiva lacrima) to the short but delicious rondo for soprano. Music also becomes political in this comedy between the larmoyant and the ironic.
THE MUSIC
From the musical point of view, Donato Renzetti is a concertmaster specialized in the repertoire of the late eighteenth century; he placed the orchestra at the service of the voices. Alessandro Sito (Dulcamara) and Adrin Sampetrean (Belcore), although young, know the roles well. Rosa Feola comes from the Opera School of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia where on May 18th she will sing in Traviata. . The applausometer, however, went to the stars for the young Antonio Poli, especially when he faced the fearsome “Una furtiva lacrima”, in which he showed great skill, challenging the B flat of the first verse and gently going to D flat of the second to the chest C and to the final natural B. Pilo had sung the role at the Opera House in 2011 in the second cast and we had always listened to him in Rome in the part of Ismaele by Verdi’s Nabucco and in Salzburg in ‘I Due Figaro’ by Mercadante. He is young. Only now does he appear in full stage and vocal maturity. Since Francesco Meli has faced heavier roles, he has been the only Italian light lyric tenor who can sing an important part of the late eighteenth – early nineteenth century repertoire. It is important that you cultivate it with care without falling into the temptation to face roles such as the Duke of Mantua or Alfredo. Since Francesco Meli has faced heavier roles, he has been the only Italian light lyric tenor who can sing an important part of the late eighteenth – early nineteenth century repertoire. It is important that you cultivate it with care without falling into the temptation to face roles such as the Duke of Mantua or Alfredo. Since Francesco Meli has faced heavier roles, he has been the only Italian light lyric tenor who can sing an important part of the late eighteenth – early nineteenth century repertoire. It is important that you cultivate it with care without falling into the temptation to face roles such as the Duke of Mantua or Alfredo.
