Classical music and jazz: the Elixir of Love - ENO at the Coliseum
Published: 18 February 2010
A VERITABLE feast of Jonathan Miller fun, gaiety and witticisms is served up in his new production of Donizetti’s comic masterpiece The Elixir of Love for the English National Opera at the Coliseum.
Initially created for the New York City Opera, his Elixir is relocated from rural Italy of the mid-19th century to Adina’s Diner, a café in 1950s mid-west America.
The production gains greatly from a new translation by Kelley Rourke, drawing inspiration from US crooners and composers of the time, Cole Porter’s “de-lovely” making a witty entry at one point.
On the night, the show was stolen by Andrew Shore’s magnificent portrayal of Dr Dulcamara, the quack doctor arriving on stage in an open-top Cadillac to sell his magic love potion to the assembled crowd.
“You want to be prolific? You want to be terrific?” he asks in an American drawl. Several of his scenes with the chorus had the audience convulsed with laughter.
Even so, when a member of the chorus emerges from the loo with her dress caught up in her knickers, you begin to wonder whether this is Donizetti or Alan Carr, Chatty Man.
With competition from Dulcamara, the crowd and Miller’s witticisms, the love story has difficulty in establishing its central role.
It starts well enough with young mechanic Nemorino in distress at being spurned by Adina; and Nemorino’s wooing of Adina with the aid of the love potion has some delightful Miller moments – the shy mechanic transformed into a James Dean lookalike.
But Donizetti’s inspired Una Furtive Lagrima sung by Nemorino – “I saw a tear fall silently” in Kelley Rourke’s translation – fell short of the magnificent love song needed to capture Adina’s heart.
And neither Canadian tenor John Tessier as Nemorino nor Sarah Tynan as Adina has the strength of voice to turn the opera into the love story it should be rather than Miller’s jolly crowd scenes verging on farce.
• The Elixir of Love, London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2, 0871 911 0200, from £15, February 19, 24, 27, March 3, 5, 11, 16 and 23