Grange Park Opera

Endlessly witty, endlessly touching

Lovable poor boy is besotted with rich girl. Glamorous soldier swaggers on to sweep her off her feet. Visiting quack arrives selling his love potion, his elisir d’amore. What’s a poor boy to do? Can you see where this is heading?

Donizetti’s melodramma giocoso is the perfect summer opera. It has it all – including the world’s favourite tenor aria.

Dazzling soprano Jennifer France heads a new production from multiple award-winning director Olivia Fuchs.

Synopsis

Act 1: Tea break in a small town in the middle of nowhere

Giannetta and the others are taking a few moments rest in the midday sun. Adina is reading leisurely but under the constant stare of Nemorino who is overwhelmed by her beauty, her intelligence – she even knows how to read! – and of the impossibility of his ever being able to win her. She finishes her book and is pressured into reading it aloud to the workers. It is the story of how Tristan won the love of the fair Isolde by means of an elixir of love.

Sergeant Belcore and his troop arrive in town. He immediately sets his sights on seducing Adina, advising her to surrender to his charms. Her reply is cool but this does little to allay Nemorino’s envy. The others look on in fascination and Giannetta urges them to return to work. Belcore leaves to find lodgings.

Alone together, Nemorino plucks up the courage to approach Adina. She ignores his entreaties but advises that he make a trip to visit his sick uncle. Adina seems unashamed of her capricious nature; her affections are changeable. Nemorino insists that he is the reverse; he will love her until the day he dies.

There is great excitement at the arrival of another outsider: a salesman, Dulcamara. He calms the crowd before getting down to the real purpose of his visit: selling a miracle cure for every trouble. It transforms septuagenarians into strapping fathers, eliminates wrinkles, kills rats and brings the dead to life!

Nemorino wonders if, by any chance, Dulcamara stocks the elixir that Queen Isolde was given. For a moment Dulcamara is thrown but recovers: he brewed Isolde’s elixir himself. He sells a grateful Nemorino a bottle of Bordeaux. The Instructions for Use are as follows: shake gently and drink (but there will be no effect for 24 hours – and by then Dulcamara will be on the road).

Nemorino takes a slug and the delicious warmth gives him confidence enough to play Adina at her own game: he simply ignores her. Adina is so puzzled and put out by Nemorino’s apparent disinterest that when Belcore appears she accepts his proposal of marriage and the wedding is fixed for the following week. Far from showing concern, Nemorino bursts out laughing, secure in his knowledge that long before their wedding day the elixir will have taken effect.

BUT… news reaches town that Belcore must leave the following morning and so the wedding date is brought forward – they will get married at once. Nemorino begs Adina to wait just one more day but she can’t and invites everyone to celebrate.

Interval

Act 2

At Adina’s wedding, Dulcamara wants to perform his party-piece. He takes the part of an amorous elderly senator and Adina the role of a kind girl who prefers her handsome gondolier to the old man’s bank balance.

The lawyer arrives to witness the signing of the marriage contract and as Dulcamara tucks into the feast, he is joined by Nemorino, heart-broken. Perhaps a second bottle of the elixir will produce the necessary immediate effect (for he is leaving in half-an-hour) – but Nemorino has no money. Meanwhile, Adina has postponed the ceremony, feeling that her triumph over Nemorino is incomplete unless he sees her wed another. Belcore returns, disgruntled, and proposes a solution to Nemorino’s financial problems: join up to his regiment.

Committing himself to the perils of war to win Adina’s heart for a single day is but nothing to Nemorino, who signs up and rushes off to find Dulcamara and the elixir.

Giannetta shares with the others the hottest gossip – Nemorino’s uncle has died leaving him a small fortune. Unaware of this development, Nemorino appears, having polished off most of the elixir. He is gratified, but not altogether surprised, when the girls flock round him.

Adina is surprised however – surprised, piqued, and not a little touched, when she learns that Nemorino joined up as a means to win her love. She realises how cruel she has been and that she loves Nemorino. Not one to miss an opportunity, Dulcamara offers Adina the elixir, but she prefers to use her own charms. Nemorino notices the change in Adina – the furtive tear in her eye which says it all – she does indeed love him.

When Adina appears Nemorino acts indifferently and she presents his army contract which she has bought back so that he won’t go away. Nemorino, irritated, responds that if she forsakes love he will join the army anyway. Adina admits she loves him.

Belcore returns to find the couple in one another’s arms. Dulcamara informs the gathered crowd the news of Nemorino’s inheritance and claims his wondrous elixir not only brings love but wealth. There is brisk trading before the salesman sets off for another small town in the middle of nowhere.

Cast & Creatives

NEMORINO, a peasant ∙ NICO DARMANIN
ADINA, a beauty with social standing ∙ JENNIFER FRANCE
BELCORE, a sergeant ∙ SAMUEL DALE JOHNSON
DOCTOR DULCAMARA, a travelling medicine man ∙ LUCIANO BATINIC

CONDUCTOR ∙ GIANLUCA MARCIANO
DIRECTOR ∙ OLIVIA FUCHS
DESIGNER ∙ FRANCIS O’CONNOR
LIGHTING DESIGNER ∙ TIM MITCHELL