Elixir of Love: Chicago Lyric Opera

Giuseppe Filinoti Shines as Nemorino

By: Susan Hall - Feb 03, 2010

Nicole Cabell, the love interest in Elixir, sings beautifully.

Alessandro Correlli, a brilliant Dr. Dulcamara. Studs Terkel thought W.C.Fields modelled himself on this character.

Gaetano Donizetti composed this perfect and perfectly beautiful opera.

Felice Romano, librettist, one of the great librettists of all time.

Giuseppe Filianoti outdoes himself in Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.

Elixir of Love
by Gaetano Donizetti 
Libretto by Felice Romani
Conducted by Bruno Campanella
Cast: Nemorino:  Giuseppe Filianoti, Adina:  Nicole Cabell, Dr. Dulcamara:  Alessandro Corbelli, Belcore:  Gabrielle Viviani
Lyric Opera of Chicago

Throughout February The Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting Donizetti's Elixir of Love.  The moment the curtain rises on a small southern Italian village, we meet Nemorino (Filianoti) who is passionately in love with Adina (Cabell), a coquette who is fickle as a breeze, flitting from man to man.  She quickly recommends finding a new love each day as the solution to anyone's amorous issues. 

We are engaged, amused and simply bowled over by the beautiful voices as the opera proceeds. 

Donizetti wrote over 70 operas, many of them in the trash can where they belong.  Writing operas for a living, Donizetti often had to produce more than three a year and seldom was able to collaborate with a talented librettist.  Sometimes a composer is functionally his own librettist, and Verdi in Aida served in this role.  The care applied to each phrase or change of pace is Verdi's own, and shows in the work.  The librettist's role is very important.

In Elixir, Donizetti worked with Felice Romani, who is considered the greatest librettist until Arrigo Boito, who collaborated with Verdi on the late operas.

We do not have to wait to get to the heart of the matter in Elixir, but are immediately engaged with a smitten young man and a young lady basking in everyone's attention, so she can afford to dismiss Nemorino's overtures.  Adina is reading the Tristan and Isolde love story, this long before Wagner took it on in quite another style.  

Adina finds the romantic idea that a love potion can make people fall for each other.  Nemorino sees it as just the solution to his problems, and when he can purchase an elixir?  He does.  Since it's Bordeaux wine, he becomes deliciously, wildly attractive. 

The opera is paced perfectly and Vincent Liotta, credited with directing this smart production, took advantage of every opportunity to enliven the stage.  The three principals are all gifted singers and actors. Liotto had outstanding performers to work with. Gabrielle Viviani as Belcore, the sergeant who is Nemorino's outsized competition for Adina's love, is appropriately self-absorbed. 

While the story is tight, we don't miss the grand in grand opera here.   Yes, Dr. Dulcamara arrives in a live horse-drawn medicine cart.  Bullwinkle, a white percheron, gets excellent reviews. 

Studs Terkel, muse of Chicago, called Dr. Dulcamara, a singing W.C. Fields.  Alessandro Corbelli is the go-to baritone for this role throughout the world, and deservedly so.  Fields could not have outdone his seductive patter. 

The Lyric provides informative pre-performance, lectures. Jesse Gram, the company's audience education manager, offered up substantive insights and fun tidbits.  He noted, for instance,  that Nemorino sings in a minor key to suggest that the drama we are watching has a serious emotional core centered on, yes, love. 

Filianoti's second act aria, after he notices a tear in Adina's eye, which indicates that she may be more than a callous flirt, drew a deservedly huge ovation.  'Una furtiva lagrima' tests all of a tenor's skill, and Filianoti delivered.  It is one of the few arias in the opera that is not supported by the orchestra, and the bare beauty was stunning.