L’elisir d’amore, Teatro Real © Javier del Real

12 performances will be offered between October 29 and November 12, in the co-production of the Teatro Real and the Palau de les Arts in Valencia , presented with great success in 2013. Damiano Michieletto assumes as stage director, and musical direction will be in charge of Gianluca Capuano, in front of two cast and the Choir and Orchestra of the Teatro Real.

The Teatro Real will offer, between October 29 and November 12, 12 functions of his fun production of L’elisir d’amore presented in 2013 with an enthusiastic reception from the public.

On this occasion, the production conceived by Damiano Michieletto– with some modifications introduced in the scenery of Paolo Fantin– will have musical direction by Gianluca Capuano, which will offer a more historicist reading and close to nineteenth-century interpretative precepts.

Damiano Michieletto moves the plot of the opera from the Basque countryside to the lively Mediterranean coast, where the summer atmosphere encourages seduction, partying and vice. There, the horny Adina runs a chiringuito where her clumsy lover Nemorino prowls. Dulcamara, witty charlatan, cheat with drugs and concoctions. And in the entertaining coastal life sailors are not missing in search of fun, led by Belcore, the typical “beach pimp”. 

In the interpretation of these peculiar characters,will alternate Brenda Rae and Sabina Puértolas (Adina); Rame Lahaj and Juan Francisco Gatell (Nemorino); Alessandro Luongo and Borja Quiza (Belcore), Erwin Schrott and Adrian Sâmpetrean (Dulcamara). Javier Camarena will play the role of Nemorino in the role of November 9, before his performance at the Gala on November 13 and the start of the rehearsals of Il pirata, by Vincenzo Bellini.

L’elisir d’amore has been one of the most beloved productions of the audience of Teatro Real since the 19th century He took his stage for the first time in 1851, a year after the inauguration of the Theater, and since then he has performed more than 80 times, including this co-production of Teatro Real and the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, which is now replenished, 6 years after its premiere in Madrid.

L’elisir d’amore, Teatro Real © Javier del Real

When, in 1832, Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) received the precipitous commission of writing an opera in just 15 days to fill a gap in the programming of the Teatro della Cannobiana in Milan, he was 34 years old and 36 operas to his credit, including some Big hits, like Anna Bolena.

His tragic and random life had already given him many blows – the death of his wife and three children – but his huge operatic production continued to grow at an overwhelming rate, which only madness slowed, already in the final stretch of his short existence, blinded by syphilis. 

Starting from the opera Le Philtre, by Auber, the famous librettist Felice Romani, with whom Donizetti had already worked on several works, quickly designed a fluid and very well articulated text, ideal for the creative impetus of the composer.

A true masterpiece is born, with a breathtaking inspiration, between comedy and drama, simplicity and depth,opera buffa and romantic, parody and melancholy … and halfway between Rossini and Bellini. Archetypal characters inspired by the commedia dell’arte, which grow with the melodic and dramaturgical breath of Donizetti’s music, of great effectiveness in the development of the action.