Gaetano Donizetti

L’ELIXIR d’AMOUR L’Elisir d’Amore

The young and naive peasant Nemorino is in love with the rich and capricious Adina, promised to Sergeant Belcore. To win his heart, he buys a love potion that is actually a bottle of wine. Despite a first failed attempt due to his intoxication, Némorino is committed to service Belcore in order to afford a new bottle! Pretty Yende debuts a new role at the Met with her first Adina opposite Matthew Polenzani, who enthralled Met audiences as Nemorino in 2013 with his ravishing “Una furtiva lagrima.” Bartlett Sher’s production is charming, with deft comedic timing, but also emotionally revealing. Domingo Hindoyan conducts.

Conductor

Domingo Hindoyan

Tosca

Pretty Yende

soprano

Cavaradossi

Matthew Polenzani

tenor

Belcore

Davide Luciano

baryton

Sacristan

Ildebrando D’Arcangelo

Bass baryton

DATE : Saturday 10 February 2018 Time : 5.30 pm

Opera en 2 acts by Gaetano Donizetti

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L’ELIXIR d’AMOUR L’Elisir d’Amore

World premiere: Teatro Cannobiana, Milan, 1832. Met premiere: January 23, 1904. L’Elisir d’Amore has been among the most consistently popular operatic comedies for almost two centuries. The story deftly combines comic archetypes with a degree of genuine character development rare in works of this type. Its ending is as much a foregone conclusion as it would be in a romantic comedy film today—the joy is in the journey, and Donizetti created one of his most instantly appealing scores for this ride.

Setting

The opera is set in a small village in

rural Italy. Some early editions

indicate a location in Basque country.

The important fact is that it’s a place

where everyone knows everyone and

where traveling salesmen provide a

major form of public entertainment.

The Met’s production sets the action in

1836, when the Risorgimento, the

movement for Italian independence,

was beginning to gather momentum.

Music

What separates L’Elisir d’Amore from dozens of charming comedies composed around the same time is not only the superiority of its hit numbers, but the overall consistency of its music. It represents the best of the bel canto tradition that reigned in Italian opera in the early 19th century—from funny patter songs to rich ensembles to wrenching melody in the solos, most notably the tenor’s showstopping aria “Una furtiva lagrima” in Act II. Its variations between major and minor keys in the climaxes are one of opera’s savviest depictions of a character’s dawning consciousness.

Composer Gaetano Donizetti 1797-1848

Born into a poor family of Bergamo, son of an employee, Gaetano Donizetti devotes himself to the musical career despite a father who intends him to the bar. Luckily, there was in Bergamo an important composer of the previous generation: Simon Mayr, chapel master of the basilica. Thanks to grants from the Pious Institute of Misericordia Maggiore, the latter had instituted Charitable Music Lessons to which Donizetti was admitted in April 1806. He was then 8 years old. He studied for nine years under the direction of Mayr, who obtained, in October 1815, to send him to the Philharmonic High School in Bologna to study counterpoint and fugue under the direction of the best teacher of the time, Father Stanislao Mattei, also the master of Rossini (seven years older than Donizetti). While composing, under the direction of Mattei, religious pieces of a strict style, Donizetti gave to Bologna, in September 1816, his first opera, The Pygmalion, which will be represented only in 1960.

Back in his hometown, he held a position at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. His career as an opera composer officially began on November 14, 1818 with the creation of Enrico di Borgogna at the Teatro San Luca in Venice. The young composer has his first success with his next work, Zoraide di Granata, composed with the help of Mayr and represented on January 28, 1822 at Teatro Argentina in Rome. On this occasion, Donizetti shows the extreme speed that characterizes it because it must rewrite a good part of the score a few days before the first, following the death of one of the main performers. In Rome, he meets Jacopo Ferretti and the Vasselli family. Ferretti gives him the libretto of an opera-bouffe, the ajo nell'imbarazzo, which is represented with great success at the Teatro Valle on February 4, 1824 and is considered the first small masterpiece of Donizetti in the comic genre. From 1818 to 1828, Donizetti composed 19 operas, several of which were a real success: Elvira, Alfredo the Great, Olivo e Pasquale, Alahor in Granata, Chiara e Serafino, etc. But it was in Naples, where he moved after his marriage to Virginia Vasselli in Rome on June 1, 1828, that he got his first real "triumph" with L'esule di Roma (1828). Helped by an unusual creativity and work force, he begins to chase successes. On December 26, 1830, he triumphed at the Teatro Carcano in Milan with Anna Bolena, the first of which had a prestigious cast, including Giuditta Pasta and Giovanni Battista Rubini. The opera was not long in being taken up in Paris (first work of the composer created in this city in September 1831), in London, in Madrid, in Dresden and even in Havana. He triumphed again on May 12, 1832 with L'elisir d'amore, represented at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan. These successes earned him the title of master of the chapel and professor of composition at the Real Collegio (Conservatory) of Naples on June 28, 1834, and then, in 1836, master of counterpoint at the same conservatory. In 1835, at the invitation of Rossini, Donizetti went to Paris where he played at the Theater of the Italians Marin Faliero (March 12). In April, he was knighted the Legion of Honor by King Louis-Philippe. Back in Naples, he won a memorable triumph at the Teatro San Carlo with Lucia di Lammermoor, his most famous work, composed in just six weeks. The death of his wife on July 30, 1837, plunged him into a deep depression. On October 29, however, he had a new masterpiece, Roberto Devereux, still represented at San Carlo. The following year, the ban of Poliuto by the Neapolitan censorship and the spite of not having obtained to be named officially director of the conservatory after the death of Zingarelli, while he already held this function ad interim, convince him to leave Naples and settle in Paris. Moreover, since the death of his wife, nothing keeps him in this city. Collaborating with Eugène Scribe and other librettists like Alphonse Royer, Gustave Vaëz or Vernoy de Saint-Georges, he creates a series of operas some of which have become classics of the world lyric repertoire: • The Martyrs or Poliuto (1840), from Polyeucte de Corneille, who had few representations • The Daughter of the Regiment (1840• The Favorite (1840) • Rita or the Beaten Husband (composed in 1841 but only created, posthumously, in 1860) • Don Pasquale (1843) • Dom Sebastian, King of Portugal (1843), "Grand Opera" composed in two months.

From 1842 to 1846, Donizetti continued to travel, mainly between Paris, the major Italian cities (Naples, Rome, Bologna, Milan, Venice) and Vienna where he was appointed head of the court in 1842. This is where he begins to feel the attacks of syphilis, which will force him to stop working in 1845. Under the effect of the nervous attacks of the disease, he loses the word, can no longer walk, and darkens little by little in the madness, he who had not stopped staging it in the theater. Alarmed by his condition, Donizetti's friends and family send his nephew, Andrea, son of Giuseppe Donizetti to Paris. Donizetti was interned in 1846 at the lunatic asylum at Ivry-sur-Seine. In 1847 he was transferred to Paris in a house near the Champs Elysees. Andrea Donizetti obtained in September 1847 the authorization of the Paris authorities (prefect Gabriel Delessert), to be transferred to his hometown, Bergamo, where he died in 1848. Donizetti had a brother much older than him, Giuseppe Donizetti, born in 1788, who was a long time director of the sultan's military music in Constantinople, where he died in 1856. He made western music better known in the Ottoman Empire and popularized it. his steps, pieces for piano and lieder.

Synopsis

Act I

Italy, 1836. Nemorino, a young villager, is unhappily in love with the beautiful farm owner Adina, who he thinks is beyond his reach. Adina tells the gathered peasants about the book she is reading—the story of how Tristan won the heart of Iseult by drinking a magic love potion. A regiment of soldiers arrives, led by the pompous Sergeant Belcore, who immediately introduces himself to Adina and asks her to marry him. Adina declares that she is in no hurry to make up her mind but promises to think over the offer. Left alone with Nemorino, Adina tells him that his time would be better spent in town, looking after his sick uncle, than hoping to win her love. She suggests that he do as she does and change affections every single day. Nemorino reminds her that one can never forget one’s first love. Dr. Dulcamara, a traveling purveyor of patent medicines, arrives in the village advertising a potion capable of curing anything. Nemorino shyly asks him if he sells the elixir of love described in Adina’s book. Dulcamara claims he does, slyly proffering a bottle of simple Bordeaux.

He explains that Nemorino will have to wait until the next day—when the doctor will be gone—to see the results Though it costs him his last ducat, Nemorino buys and immediately drinks it.. Nemorino begins to feel the effect of the “potion” and, convinced he will be irresistible to Adina the next day, feigns cheerful indifference towards her. Surprised and hurt, Adina flirts with Belcore. When orders arrive for the sergeant to return immediately to his garrison, Adina agrees to marry him at once. The shocked Nemorino begs her to wait one more day, but she dismisses him and invites the entire village to her wedding. Nemorino desperately calls for the doctor’s help.

Act II

At the pre-wedding feast, Adina and Dulcamara entertain the guests with a song. Adina wonders why Nemorino isn’t there. She doesn’t want to sign the marriage contract until he appears. Meanwhile, Nemorino asks Dulcamara for another bottle of the elixir. Since he doesn’t have any money left, the doctor agrees to wait so Nemorino can borrow the cash. Belcore is bewildered that Adina has postponed the wedding. When Nemorino tells him that he needs money right away, the sergeant persuades him to join the army and receive a volunteer bonus. Nemorino buys more elixir and suddenly finds himself besieged by a group of women. Unaware of the news that his uncle has died and left him a fortune, he believes the elixir is finally taking effect. Adina feels responsible for Nemorino’s enlistment, but her concern turns to jealousy when she sees him with the other women. Dulcamara boasts about the power of his elixir and offers to sell Adina some, but she is determined to win Nemorino all on her own. Nemorino now feels sure that Adina cares for him: He noticed a tear on her cheek when she saw him with the other women. Adina returns to tell Nemorino that she has bought back his enlistment papers. When he again feigns indifference, she finally confesses that she loves him. Belcore appears to find the two embracing and redirects his affections to Giannetta, declaring that thousands of women await him elsewhere. Dulcamara brags to the crowd that his miraculous potion can make people fall in love and even turn poor peasants into millionaires.

Next broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera New York

LA BOHÈME Giacomo Puccini

Saturday 24 February 2018 6.00 pm