Summary
Be warned, please: The Santa Pe Opera's charming, warm-hearted new production of Gaetano Donizetti's The Elixir of Love is liable to give you a bad case of those moming-after-the-opera, just-can'f-get-those-tunes-out-of-my-head hangovers. Alka-Seltzer won't help, so let the inner melodies play. They're pretty terrific, as if you didn't know, and neither Donizetti nor his quack creation, the cure-all Doctor Dulcamara, will object.
Much of the credit for this happy state of things belongs to Corrado Rovaris, who conducted a gleaming Simon Boccanegra here in 2004 and, two years ago, a solid La bohème. His fleet account of Donizetti's score skips cheerfully along. Rovaris and the deft SFO orchestra deliver an idiomatic, nicely inflected reading that brims with affection for Donizetti's delightmaking work. Perhaps the fact that both Rovaris and the composer share Bergamo, Italy as their birthplace boosts this amiable relationship.Elixir has been too long a stranger to the SFO. Its only other outing here was in that annus mirabilis, 1968, the season after a disastrous fire destroyed the company's first house. The SFO rebounded with a new house, now replaced by the present theater, and an ambitious repertory that included Donizetti's comic opera in a pretty standard production: happy 19th century peasants galore, plus a Dulcamara rising grandly from the orchestra pit atop the company's nifty new elevator.See the full content of this document
Extract
Bel Canto, Pronto
BEL CANTO, PRONTO
SFO's updated Elixir is well-staged and heartfelt.THE ELIXIR OF LOVE9 pmWednesday, July 15Through Aug. 2B$26-$188The Santa Fe Opera Hwy. 84/285 986-5900Be warned, please: The Santa Pe Opera'...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
