Thomas Atkins, Segomotso Masego Shupinyaneng, and Rhian Lois, Rehearsal Image © Genevieve Girling
English National Opera / Teresa Riveiro Böhm
London Coliseum, 15th November 2024
Donizetti’s evergreen favourite, L’elisir d’amore (1832), was last staged at ENO in 2011, once again using Jonathan Miler’s 1950s American roadside diner setting. Curiously, given the current revivals of Miller productions this season, La bohème and Rigoletto, ENO have staged a brand new version, with ENO-debutant director Harry Fehr’s imaginative production set in an England country house, looking more Miller than Miller! The timeframe is “the early 1940s” but viewed through Fehr’s framing conceit of a c1960s broadcast on ‘ENOTV’ (the BBC’s TV service was shut down at the outbreak of war in September 1939 and did not resume until 1946, so it must be post-war). Video designer Matt Powell had fun with the opening cartoon sequence accompanying the Overture, eventually coming to rest on the vast kitchen-communal dining room of Adina’s country house, then revealed in real life as the curtain rose.
In conventional productions, set in a late-eighteenth century Basque Spain village (often relocated to Italy), the action of the opera is pretty much entirely alfresco. Fehr locates the opera entirely indoors (though most of the cast do exeunt outside within and between scenes), the first act in the kitchen, the second (for the on-off nuptial celebration) in a large reception room. The look and feel of these were convincing on their own terms, a tribute to Nicky Shaw’s set designs, although the garret provided for Adina’s room (approached by an unprepossessing staircase) seem a little out of kilter. Zahra Mansouri’s costumes, from the RAF uniforms of the dashing Belcore and his aircrew to the Land Army outfits of the manorial retainers, were nicely of the time and fitted neatly into the ambience of the whole.
That said, this all provided a lot of theatrical icing over a scenario that is straightforward almost to the point of being trite. Nemorino—is he exempt from military service or a conscientious objector?—is besotted with the Lady of the Manor, Adina, who is in turn courted opportunistically by the self-declared ‘hero’, Belcore. Into the mix comes the travelling snake-oil salesman, Dulcamara, purveyor of the titular (and, naturally, completely ineffectual) elixir, whose arrival resolves the love-triangle satisfactorily, all played out in front of the manor staff of this indoor village. Laid out in its essentials, perhaps it needs all the help it can get!
Musically, that help is substantial and wholly convincing. Offsetting the lovelorn, querulous Nemorino—marvellously sung and characterised by Thomas Atkins, also making his ENO debut—was Rhian Lois’ flirty, flighty Adina. Lois, last seen as Ofwarren in the revival of The Handmaid’s Tale, burst onto the scene in Act One, dominating proceedings like Shirley Ballas in Strictly Come Dancing (but with no glitter). Lois nicely balanced Adina’s contemptuous regard of Nemorino’s puppy love, but not so much to avoid teasing and leading him on, with the distraction of Belcore’s whirlwind wooing, and the gradual dawning of awareness that she might actually love Nemorino in return. Dan D’Souza (since announced as a new Harewood Artist for ENO) brought unusual depth to the swaggering Belcore, hinting at the contained violence beneath the bluster. Another debutant, Brandon Cedel, also provided a rounded portrait of Dulcamara’s spiv (though sung with an American accent I guess flim-flam man would be the appropriate epithet), while Segomotso Masego Shupinyaneng entertained in the much tinier role of Giannetta. As usual, the wonderful ENO Chorus filled in the blanks for the villagers, admirers and farm workers, and the ENO Orchestra were on fine form in Donizetti’s melodious score, tautly directed by Teresa Riveiro Böhm who kept the pace rattling along very nicely, as in Dulcamara’s patter song. Yet, the lyrical aspects were not absent, as in Nemorino’s aria Una furtiva lagrima (‘A furtive tear’). The final resolution did play out a touch like Gilbert and Sullivan, curious given hat Gilbert wrote a burlesque variant on the opera, as Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack, in 1866. Perhaps ENO might look at staging that in a upcoming season?