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Organization

Singer

Soprano

Erika Miklósa

Adina

Conductor

Zsolt Jankó

Stage director

András Kürthy

Set designer

László Székely

Costume designer

Márta Pilinyi

Choreographer

Adrian Mureșan

Szabolcs Kulcsar

Chorus master

Sándor Barabás

Endre Ferenczi

Annamária Gombár

Kolcsar Katalin

Tenor

Tony Bardon

Nemorino

Baritone

Csaba Sándor

Belcore

Bass

Cristian Hodrea

Doctor Dulcamara

Lívia Antal

Giannetta

Silent

Veress Laszló

A notary

Viorica Bogoi

Ginepra

Opera Maghiară din Cluj-Napoca

L'elisir d'amore -  (The Elixir of Love)

Cluj-Napoca

Romania

Opera Maghiară

L'elisir d'amore Donizetti

Public

The Elixir of Love

Approved

Gaetano Donizetti L'Elisir d'amore ( Love Potionl) was performed 180 years ago, on May 12, 1832, at the Teatro della Cannobbiana in Milan. At that time, Rossini had been retiring from stage music for three years (since Tell Vilmos's 1829 premiere); Bellini dies three years later, after writing the Puritans, in 1835; Verdi's first stage work, the opera Oberto, will have to wait another seven years. Donizetti is 35 years old at the beginning of his career, the beginning of his most successful creative era, fourteen years before his theatrical debut and twelve years before his final opera was reworked. Among her major works is Anna Boleyn, but later she composes only Borgia Lucrezia, Lucia Lammermoor, Mary Stuart, and her other famous comedy, The Daughter of the Regiment, and Don Pasquale.

However , the Potion of Love also stands out from this period, but not only from this, and not only from its author: the masterpiece is one of the most beloved and played pieces in the entire history of opera. Why is it that even after 180 years, it is popular with lovers and audiences alike? Why, for example, did the other three Donizetti works (Fausta; Ugo, conte di Parigi and Sancia di Castiglia), presented in the same year, not have a similar success?

What’s essential for really good operas: you need a witty, well-paced textbook. Therefore, the potion librettist Felice Romani (1788-1865) is to be commended. The Genoese screenwriter and musicologist reworked and translated the textbook Le philtre, written in 1831 by the renowned French playwright and screenwriter Eugène Scribe, in just seven days - Donizetti had another seven days to complete the music on time. The French author’s libretto was originally written for Daniel Auber - his work was shown in Paris in 1831, but today it is perhaps only mentioned because it shares a source with the Potion of Love.
A good theme, a good basic text alone is not enough to make a lasting opera. (Felice Romani, for example, wrote the libretto for Ugo, conte di Parigi, and even more than a hundred other operas, but few have been similarly successful). In addition, it took a lucky combination of many factors for such an excellent and lasting opera to be born. The distribution of roles is not extraordinary, there are no more than one big role per tone, so the exhibition of the choir can be solved even with narrower possibilities. (This is an important consideration - for Rossini's performance of Otello, for example, it is hardly possible to get five tenors for a single performance today.) Censorship did not mutilate the piece (unlike the Ugo, conte di Parigi) because no political clues could be found in it. The piece is not historical, it is not strictly age-related - therefore subsequent staging can be relatively free to shape the stage environment. It deals with a simple but timeless theme with recognizable types in it (Belcore is the sobbing soldier, Dulcamara in the charismatic charlatan, Nemorino is the hopeless woman in love, and Adina is the woman with a cold but eventually softening heart), but these types are full of life they become - and this is arguably the merit of the composer. As well as the fact that the play completely fits together side by side with comic, buffo nuances (such as Dulcamara’s scenes) and lyrical, emotional motifs (Nemorino’s cognac and famous romance); it is a special feat that Donizetti connects the two almost completely separate worlds at the same time, it can also be fused together - in this respect, the culmination of the work is perhaps Nemorino and Belcore II. act double.
Of particular interest to today's performers and audiences is that the work not only deals with a basic theme, but is based on the legend of Tristan and Isolde (as the excerpt read by Adina points out in the first scene), so according to our popular usage today it is about: it brings a well-known medieval story closer to us and wins a happier, cheerful ending than the original.
The richness of the play and the aforementioned variability of the piece can also be attractive to those who stage it. Most of the opera's sound recordings - and the version now on display - omit a relatively long scene from the middle of the second act, not without reason: musically this part is perhaps the least colorful, imaginative, and his plot explains a twist that is more concise by omitting detail. , can be made more mysterious, more diverse, more meaningful. Maybe in order to feel like a good work, it’s not enough to recognize its merits, we also need to find the connection points to it - if necessary, we need to reach out to it. And a real masterpiece can stand it in all circumstances.

English

The Elixir of Love by Donizetti, From (2020/2020), Directed by András Kürthy, Annamária Gombár,, Conductor Zsolt Jankó, Szabolcs Kulcsar, Opera Maghiară, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

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