Harry Fehr’s new English National Opera staging of The Elixir of Love relocates Donizetti’s romantic comedy from early 19th-century Italy to England during the second world war. It’s not quite a direct transposition: projected credits during the introduction, and at the close, tell us that what we are meant to be watching is a 1960s or 70s sitcom, made by “ENOTV” and set during the early 1940s, a framing device that explains the updating, but adds little to the staging itself.
Adina’s farm has become a dilapidated country mansion, requisitioned by the Women’s Land Army for use as a hostel and canteen, and an opera almost invariably set in the open air is now brought indoors, with the first act taking place in a kitchen and the second in a disused ballroom, where dust sheets are hastily removed from furniture to allow wedding festivities to take place. Rhian Lois’s Adina is the glamorous lady of the manor, unsure of her feelings for Thomas Atkins’s conscientious objector Nemorino, and playing him off against Dan D’Souza’s Belcore, a flying ace in this instance, rather than a soldier. Brandon Cedel’s Dulcamara, meanwhile, is an American racketeer, flashy and charming, albeit unscrupulously on the make.
Much of it is hugely enjoyable, but not all of it quite works. Atkins by and large plays Nemorino as sweet, gauche and rather shy, much as we might usually expect, so we have to take it on trust from those opening credits that he is meant to be a conscientious objector, though that also explains why D’Souza’s Belcore, whose “God’s gift” sexuality masks a vicious temper, treats him with a contempt bordering on violence. Cedel is a younger, more immediately charismatic Dulcamara than most, whose fraudulent interventions now result in chaos as well as love and joy: the final scene, in which he leaves the villagers fighting among themselves for bottles of his elixir (bourbon rather than bordeaux, here), jars with the rest of it.
Musically, it’s lovely from start to finish, though conductor Teresa Riveiro Böhm sometimes favours extreme speeds and occasionally allows the orchestra to be fractionally over-prominent. Atkins, in a fine ENO debut, makes a wonderful Nemorino, beautifully acted, and sung with often exquisite lyrical ease. Lois is terrific, too, with a blaze in her tone and superbly expressive coloratura. D’Souza sings with admirable swagger in a characterisation more unpleasant than most, which is Fehr’s doing. Cedel has great fun as Dulcamara, his patter wonderfully clear, the mockery, humour and flashes of venality all superbly realised. Segomotso Masego Shupinyaneng, meanwhile, does much with little as Gianetta, a role sometimes undercast, though not here. The playing and choral singing are both outstanding.
• In repertory at the Coliseum, London, until 5 December.
