L’elisir d’amore

Poor Nemorino, the lovesick peasant: “Go, fortunate mortal; I have given you a treasure: every woman will sigh for you tomorrow.” Such is the promise made by Dr. Dulcamara—though in truth he is a charlatan—who sells him a so-called “love elixir.” With the gullible young man’s first sip of the supposed remedy, the plot of Gaetano Donizetti’s melodramma giocoso unfolds, full of comic twists and—of course—a happy ending. “The natural regularity of Italian music here meets a delightful freshness and a lightness that I would call almost ingenious,” wrote Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick in 1897, correctly predicting not only Donizetti’s worldwide success but also “immortality for this light and cheerful opera,” which went on to become one of the most prestigious examples of the Bel canto repertoire. Donizetti composed it in just a few weeks: in April 1832 he received the commission for the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan, and by May the premiere of L’elisir d’amore was already on stage. Much ado about nothing? Far from it. What drives Donizetti and his librettist Felice Romani are the passions and desires of their characters, epitomized in the famous aria “Una furtiva lagrima.” The opera entertains with sparkling wit, yet it is not without depth: L’elisir d’amore, with its romantic hues, is as touching as it is delightful.