Intermezzo

L'elisir d'amore - Royal Opera House

L'elisir d'amore - Royal Opera House, 13 November 2012 (first night)

This gently remodelled and reverentially paced revival of Laurent Pelly's 2007 production is not a vintage night at the opera. Slightly corked more like.

Pelly's cosy Cath Kidston faux-50s perspective is not a patch on Jonathan Miller's edgier ENO production for wit, warmth and vitality. And what Pelly hasn't sucked out, Bruno Campanella's connoisseurly savouring of every last note drained down to the dregs. Luckily, this is the best cast it's had so far, and the superb individual performances make it a show worth seeing.

L’elisir for less

You wait all year for a Royal Opera House discount offer and then two come along at once.

Stalls tickets for L'elisir d'amore are still not cheap, but at least they're down to £85 (usually £164-175).

For performances on 23 and 28 November use the promo code esdamore or call the box office on 0207 304 4000 and quote ‘Eve Standard L’elisir offer’.

For the 4 and 7 December shows, use the promo code metrolelisir.

Thanks to readers Nick and Richard for the tip.

Rolando Villazon goes West

Here's a German TV feature on the Rolando Villazon-directed L'Elisir d'Amore, which opens at the Festspielhaus Baden Baden on Monday. Horses, it seems, are this year's thing.

Papering the house

Thanks to readers Nick and Jamie for spotting the latest ENO discounts. 

Via Moneysavingexpert.com (scroll down to find the deal), tickets for The Elixir of Love are £10-£15 (Upper Circle) or £20 (rear Dress Circle) - and because they're sold via the ENO website, you get to pick your seat.

Meanwhile, it seems the reason you can't find any discounts for The Passenger is that ENO have been reduced to giving the tickets away. With good reason. Having managed to sit through less than an hour of it on opening night before boredom obliged my exit, I would say 'total dud' is polite.

Another ENO Elixir offer

 
Kelkoo Select are offering tickets for ENO's Elixir of Love on 23 and 25 September for £25 (Dress Circle) or £15 (Upper Circle).

As with the similarly-priced lastminute.com offer, you don't get to pick your own seats.

Alternatively, there's Seetickets' more expensive offer  - Upper Circle tickets reduced from £59 to £35. Again you don't get to choose your seat, but it's valid for all dates, and at least you can see what you've been assigned before you pay.

Highly recommended if you're in the mood for something a bit silly.

Discount Elixir

 
Lastminute.com is offering discounted tickets for all performances of ENO's The Elixir of Love.

Dress Circle seats are £25 and Upper Circle £15 - book here.

Be warned that Lastminute.com seats are normally in the back rows.

(Thanks to reader Shyam for the tip-off).

Rolando Villazon - dismounted again

 "Alongside Die schweigsame Frau, the highlight of this summer’s Munich Opera Festival was to have been three performances at the Nationaltheater of L’elisir d’amore starring Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón. Having cancelled the first two, Villazón croaked and cracked his way through act one on Tuesday, then appeared in front of the curtain to ask for the audience’s understanding. Prolonged applause – followed by act two at a feeble half-voice.

Villazón is a born communicator, and you could sense the audience’s heart going out to him. But he has sung only a handful of stage performances since the summer of 2008, and it’s hard to see managements keeping faith if he goes on like this. He has a large enough personality to survive on celebrity concerts and television stunts, but Tuesday’s performance, it seems to me, may signal the end of his operatic career".

Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 30 July 2010

Pavol Breslik fills Rolando's underpants

L'elisir d'amore - National Theatre Munich, 21 July 2010

Of course I knew (a few hours) in advance. But it seemed from the collective gasp that many were taken by surprise when it was announced that illness prevented Rolando Villazon from appearing and Pavol Breslik, having arrived just an hour before from a Salzburg rehearsal, would be taking his place. I probably wouldn't have booked for one of my least favourite operas (long sold out) if it wasn't for the scheduled appearance of one of my most favourite singers. It seemed from the widespread booing when Rolando's name was announced that many others wouldn't have either.

January sale - more cheap seats

Whatsonstage.com is kindly assisting London's opera companies to flog some of those seats regular marketing ploys alone cannot shift. 

They're offering a handsome discount on Rake's Progress stalls seats at the Royal Opera House on 26 and 28 January and 3 February - £66 (40% off) plus free champagne. Details here.

And there's an outing to Jonathan Miller's new production of The Elixir of Love at ENO on 23 March with a top-price ticket, programme and drink included in the price of £40 (more than 50% off). Details of that one here.

L’elisir d’amore resuscitated at the Royal Opera House

L’elisir d’amore - Royal Opera House, 12 May 2009

Only 18 months old, and already this Laurent Pelly production is looking tired. Actually, that's not quite fair. It's more that it leans too heavily on wow factor. Once you've seen the mountain of haystacks, the tenor on a tractor, the soprano on a Mobylette, and the most adorable Jack Russell ever - well, that's it really. You don't need to see it again. In 2007 I was persuaded, but second time around the sparkle of novelty has gone. Still, the fifties setting has an innocent charm, even if the relentless mugging of the cast grates after a while.

The best thing in the production by some distance is Diana Damrau's Adina (in SJP wig). Her bantering brother/sister relationship with Giuseppe Filianoti's Nemorino was beautifully handled, and sweetly touching when it melts into love. Effortless rippling coloratura topped off the silvery brilliance of her singing.

Filianoti is another question. His acting is terrific - never was there a more amiable dimwit. And he has a real rapport with Damrau. He sings cleanly I suppose, he hits the notes. But his tone is patchy, his colouring limited, and his top end is effortfully stretched, with only a spot of naughtily-interposed falsetto saving Una furtiva lagrima from crash-and-burn.

What about the rest? Thankfully Simone Alaimo's well-practiced Dulcamara was the real thing - I suspect in spite of the direction rather than because of it. I couldn't see why the lovely Adina would fall for Anthony Michaels-Moore's stiff and formal Belcore though. A little more oily charm was needed. Eri Nakamura had enough stage presence to make Giannetta's two minutes of glory memorable.

I'm not sure what conductor Bruno Campanella was aiming for. Clean, vibrato-free playing was combined with slowish, sometimes sluggish pacing - was he simply being considerate of certain singers? At least the pit/stage co-ordination was as accurate as we can hope for, and we were spared the ghastly village band sound favoured by many visiting conductors.

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Hay there it's L'Elisir d'Amore at Covent Garden

L'Elisir d'Amore - Royal Opera House, 13 November 2007

In the wake of Rolando Villazón's sicknote to London, could any replacement hope to fill his glossy botines adequately?

Stefano Secco was originally booked as the second stringer Nemorino, and although he doesn't have Villazón's bushbaby charisma (or vocal resources), he does at least share a touching vulnerability which makes it easy to see why he was originally cast. He makes us root for his Nemorino, the ingenuous optimist punching above his weight in his pursuit of the capricious Adina. It's a characterisation that helps accommodate certain of his vocal shortcomings - strain at the top, excessive bleatiness, a tendency to swallow rather than float the pianissimos. It can't conceal the fact though that much of the time, especially at the start, his voice simply wasn't quite big enough.

It was a problem sporadically shared by Aleksandra Kurzak (Adina), though in her case I wondered if she was simply husbanding her resources to make sure she didn't give out before the end. Certainly everything else was exquisite, from the top to bottom bell-like tone to the needle-sharp coloratura. In this production, she's a foxy minx with a soft centre, a part Kurzak wiggled into with the born-to-it sauce of the young Claudia Cardinale. She may not be 100% the finished article yet, but with a virtual block booking at the Royal Opera House for the next couple of years, we will have plenty more opportunities to see how she develops.

The other characters took us further into the realms of slapstick. Paolo Gavanelli's colossal Dulcamara was half Tony Soprano and half Sir Les Patterson, but that huge voice had a natural ease. Ludovic Tézier's Belcore strutted and posed like a wind-up toy soldier, his baritone lightweight but firmly placed and elegant.

Director Laurent Pelly places them in a romanticised fifties Italian village. The stage is for most of the time filled with giant haystacks (no, not that one, though it's an idea, isn't it?) constantly clambered over by the cast, or else a scruffy roadside cafe backing on to an unsanitary-looking washroom. Ancient scooters and Ozzie the jack russell terrier complete the rural idyll, home-made sprigged cotton frocks and flat caps colour the scene.

His cinematic inspiration is emphasised by the screen-like framing of the proscenium arch, the hyper-realism of the sets and the cunning disguise of walls -- the background field recedes into the horizon, and the set appears to continue right out beyond the wings. It's a neat distancing device that brings the rather improbable story up to date but at the same time places it in a fictional world that doesn't over-stretch our credulity. 

The chorus, as ever in Pelly productions, were more than just singing bystanders. I think he has a secret rule that no-one can stand still for longer than three seconds. Everyone was forever on the move, pinpoint-choreographed, so the action never seemed to flag.

Mikko Franck maintained a comparably cracking pace with his modest forces. It may not be the greatest orchestral showcase, but you'd soon notice if the band started to sag -- and this one didn't.