Friends, plough­men and coun­try­men, you’re invit­ed to the Elixir of Love, NZ Opera’s utter­ly mad­cap new cre­ation.

Though my com­pan­ion and I were like­ly the youngest and the poor­est in the audi­ence (opera con­tin­ues to be an art form seem­ing­ly grant­ed to those above a cer­tain age), it was a show that could be enjoyed by all.

This opera is a tale for the ages. Our hero, Nemori­no, is des­per­ate­ly in love with the beau­ti­ful Adi­na, but she can’t find time for him and instead decides to wed Bel­core, a ridicu­lous Eng­lish offi­cer. How­ev­er, Nemori­no buys a ‘love potion’ off snake-oil sales­man Dul­ca­ma­ra and is sure that that will change Adina’s heart. Over a ridicu­lous two and a half hours, the pair fall in love and dis­cov­er that although the ‘potion’ may not be real, their love and the drink’s great taste and flavour cer­tain­ly is.

(Pos­si­bly spon­sored by Coca-Cola.)

One part I espe­cial­ly loved about this opera was the incred­i­ble com­mit­ment to the aes­thet­ic. It’s set (some­what) in ear­ly Aus­tralia, and the set, cos­tumes and over­all pro­duc­tion design was utter­ly gor­geous and ground­break­ing.

Direc­tor Simon Phillips writes, “My instinct is always to bring some­thing as close to home as the sce­nario will allow. This (Aus­tralian) set­ting allowed me and my design­ers to draw on some of the aes­thet­ics of both the real Aus­tralian land­scape and its depic­tion in art. As you can see in the pho­tos above, the use of cor­ru­gat­ed iron — or some­thing sim­i­lar — runs through­out the entire­ty of the show, with­in the set, the hors­es (!!!) and oth­er phys­i­cal ele­ments. It’s a bril­liant and inno­v­a­tive way to set us, as audi­ence mem­bers, with­in the scene.

Hav­ing nev­er been to the opera before, I was­n’t quite sure what to expect. The entire piece was in Ital­ian (Gae­tano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore) and an Eng­lish trans­la­tion was played on a screen to the side of the stage. As this opera was set in Aus­tralia, it was quite the unique trans­la­tion, indeed — nev­er have I ever seen the word ‘bon­za’ used in a sen­tence before, and I don’t think I ever will again.

The entire opera was per­formed beau­ti­ful­ly. An aria I espe­cial­ly loved was Come Paride vez­zoso, per­formed by Bel­core, where he tries to woo Adi­na, hilar­i­ous­ly, and she rebukes his advances. Bel­core is a weird char­ac­ter any­way, quite big­head and rather ridicu­lous, and I found him to be a lot of fun.

Major kudos to the leads of this work, Ami­na Edris (Adi­na), Pene Pati (Nemori­no), Mor­gan Pearse (Bel­core), Conal Coad (Dul­ca­ma­ra) and Natasha Wil­son (Gian­net­ta) for car­ry­ing this piece so thor­ough­ly.

Although ini­tial­ly I did feel like I would­n’t quite fit with­in the world of this dif­fer­ent art form, at the end I felt wel­comed in with open arms. There is some­thing to be said about let­ting go of pre­con­ceived notions around cer­tain things, and I did have a hilar­i­ous time in the end.

The entire work was utter­ly wit­ty and charm­ing and def­i­nite­ly worth see­ing live on stage.

Take a chance, have a gam­ble, I’m sure you’ll have a very good time.

 

The Elixir of Love is being per­formed at Wellington’s Opera House on the 26th, 28th and 30th of June. A wide range of tick­ets are avail­able here. 

Show is per­formed in Ital­ian with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles.

(Quotes abridged for length.)

(Images cour­tesy of NZ Opera and Simon Watts, bwmedia.co.nz)