Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore
Annabel Arden (stage director), Maurizio Benini (conductor) – With Peter Auty (Nemorino), Ekaterina Siurina (Adina)...
Cast
Annabel Arden — Stage director
Lez Brotherston — Set designer
Giuseppe Di Iorio — Lighting
Ekaterina Siurina — Adina
Peter Auty — Nemorino
Alfredo Daza — Sergeant Belcore
Luciano Di Pasquale — Dr Dulcamara
Program notes
Ekaterina Siurina, Peter Auty and Alfredo Daza in a playful and colorful version of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore.
A pastoral romance between Adina, the rich and gorgeous landowner, and Nemorino, a simple peasant, in love with Adina, L'Elisir d'amore sets Tristan and Iseult's love potion at the center of the action.
Donizetti wrote dozens of operas, but he is mostly famous today for five works that are regularly played in the greatest opera theatres around the world. All five were composed within ten years: L'Elisir d'amore (1832), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), La Fille du régiment (1840), La Favorite (1840) and Don Pasquale (1843). Heir of Rossini, Donizetti is at the same time a "children of the century," a Romantic poet whose taste for the belcanto made him a rival of another composer from Catania, Belini. Like him, Donizetti provided the lyric repertoire with such beautiful arias as the Una furtiva lagrima, that can be heard in L'Elisir d'amore.