San Francisco Opera: L'Elisir d'Amore

Finishing up with the San Francisco Opera's fall season. . . .

The final production of the season was Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, which is possibly the most elaborate tribute to Bacchus ever composed, & which the Opera helpfully but needlessly insists on referring to as The Elixir of Love, as if the original title were too daunting. I will admit that I paused before adding it to my choose-my-own subscription, as I enjoy the work but don't particularly love, love, love it. The last time the Opera did it, a woman next to me at another opera that year asked if I had seen it & when I told her I hadn't, she said, "Oh, it was heavenly!" & a friend of mine was so bored by that same production that she left at intermission, & I thought, either response is plausible. I ended up going to the performance the day after Thanksgiving because, as I said, I do enjoy the work & it had been quite a few years (23, according to my Opera List) since I had seen it. This would also be my first chance to hear the much-praised tenor Pene Pati.

Neither the opera nor Pati disappointed! I will admit that, even without having experienced him live, I had wondered if Pati could pass as a Nemorino – the tenor just seemed too ebullient & confident for the timid country boy. But, of course, a young man confident in many ways can be shy & uncertain when it comes to love, & Pati not only sang with wonderful warmth (giving us a thoughtful & moving furtiva lagrima in the second act) but was completely convincing as a youth rendered tongue-tied by the accomplished & socially more glamorous Adina, sung by Slávka Zámečníková, who was a revelation to me – I had expected Pati to be excellent, but I thought she was as well, with a silvery voice of crystalline clarity. In fact the whole cast was top-notch, with David Bižić as a suitably swaggering Sergeant Belcore & Renato Girolami as a charmingly crooked Dulcamara. Even Adina's assistant Giannetta was given memorable & sparkling life by Arianna Rodriguez (& to round off the cast, the appealing Randy Lee as The Mate, with fluid support all around from conductor Ramón Tebar).

A lot of credit is due to the attention to characterization by director Daniel Slater. This opera can actually be a bit tricky to bring off: you have to make sure Nemorino isn't too much of a sap, that Adina doesn't come across as coy & manipulative, that Belcore isn't too much of a bully, that Dulcamara isn't a sleaze. . . . even a comparatively minor character like Giannetta was thought through; she clearly has a crush on Nemorino (which helps make him convincing as someone Adina would also be attracted to; he's a generally attractive young man, however uncertain he is about himself), which was lightly & touchingly conveyed on stage right from her entrance – afterwards I read the program's interview with Slater & he discussed this choice in particular. This was no slapdash production!

I did have some reservations about the way Belcore was portrayed. In keeping with the production's setting in mid-1950s, La Dolce Vita-era Italy, in a resort town where Adina runs a hotel where Nemorino is a waiter, Belcore was more of a Neo-Realist-film police captain (& quite convincing as such) & less of the usual pumped-up prettyboy (I say this with respect for both Neo-Realist police chiefs & pumped-up prettyboys). But this meant that at times his threats against his rival Nemorino sounded, well, more threatening, & less like obviously empty & therefore comic swagger, than perhaps they should. As this Nemorino, while convincingly reticent in front of the woman he loves, also looks like someone you wouldn't really want to tangle with, the total effect was maybe not as light in that moment as it should have been. This is minor, though, & event thinking about it demonstrates how convincingly rooted the production was.

There was also lots of comic play that provoked genuine laughter from the audience (including me, at various points). It may seem like slight praise to note that a comic opera actually made people laugh, but if you've been to many (or maybe any) you will realize this is high praise – sometimes, even if you find something funny, you've just heard or seen it so many times that you register it but don't really even chuckle, so it was nice to see that a fresh look at even a very familiar opera can produce fresh reactions. Seated behind me was a mother & daughter (I assume); the girl looked to be earlyish teens & was carrying several stuffed animals. She had a loud & endearingly goofy laugh, & it was fun to hear how much fun she was having. All in all, this was pretty much as good as L'Elisir can get, & a satisfying end to the first half of the Opera's season.