L’elisir d’amore

Pelly updates the original Basque setting to post-war Italy, to a rural community where class is measured by urbanity and modern developments are fast encroaching on the traditional way of life. There’s a rustic feel to the place but the youth zip around on Vespas and electricity pylons line the fields. It’s easy to understand the excitement, therefore, when quack Doctor Dulcamara’s grubby truck rolls into town, and why girls swoon as Sergeant Belcore quick-marches into their sights.

This revival by director Daniel Dooner is still wonderfully fresh and crisp, and musically enjoyable, if a little lack-lustre. Giuseppe Filianoti plays the love-sick Nemorino well and his voice has a pleasant timbre but tends to sound stretched higher up. His final romanza was perfectly good but it lacked the desirable flair. Elsewhere, Anthony Michaels-Moore sings a convincing Belcore, his salt-and-pepper hair lending the swaggering soldier a sugar-daddy air, and Simone Alaimo offers fine support as Dulcamara.

While the rest of the cast offer perfectly enjoyable performances, however, it is Diana Damrau alone who really shines. Not only does she bring great charm to the character of Adina – sexy and flirtatious, she tries her darnedest to frustrate her suitors – but vocally, too she is a delight. Her bright soprano is well-suited to this sunny role and she displays a fine technique, especially in her final aria, singing a breathtaking missa di voce and an effortless volley of cascades.

The sets by Chantal Thomas are brilliantly conceived and composed. Villagers frolic around on artfully arranged straw bales and lounge outside the local trattoria, and there are wonderfully witty details: cicadas chirruping during the scene change, for example, and a collage of 1950s-style adverts for Doctor Dulcamara’s cures on the curtain screen.

In the pit, Bruno Campanella, perhaps seduced by the sun-soaked atmosphere, let the tempo sag at times on the first night but his account was spacious and attentive, and although the chorus smudged some of their rapid-fire lines they sang with infectious gusto.

Photograph: Johan Persson

– Laura Battle