The Elixir of Love at London Coliseum review: bold, comic and full of sparkle

Which of america hasn’t astatine immoderate constituent fallen for the charms of a bogus income pitch? A communal quality experience, ripe for comic exploitation, duly delivered successful Donizetti’s opera L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love).

It tells the communicative of Nemorino (“little nobody” successful Italian), excessively poor, excessively timid to archer the pistillate helium loves – the glamorous Lady of the Manor, Adina – that helium fancies her. Only aft swigging the mysterious elixir (in reality, inexpensive rotgut) peddled by travelling huckster Dulcamara does helium judge helium mightiness basal a chance. Of course, successful the extremity helium gets the miss and the money, acknowledgment to the last-minute revelation that he’s inherited the wealthiness of a precocious deceased uncle.

An mundane drama of gullible state folk, but this being 19th period comic opera, the humour is somewhat threadbare. Step guardant Harry Fehr, whose caller staging (his archetypal for English National Opera) injects sparkle without ridiculing the original. Fehr and his designers (sets by Nicky Shaw, costumes by Zahra Mansouri) person a bold idea: during the overture, the drop-curtain becomes a elephantine TV acceptable showing an animation informing america that we’re astir to ticker a sitcom from days gone by, acceptable successful an anxiety-free Second World War.

Far-fetched? Perhaps, but it works, acknowledgment mostly to the vigor that suffuses the full production. When the curtain rises, we’re successful Adina’s spacious mansion. Movement manager Anjali Mehra fills the signifier with a tiny service of Land Girls and Boys, each bustling winningly. The opera is sung successful the precocious Amanda Holden’s witty translation (subtly amended for this production): not galore radical are brave capable to rhyme “bridal” with “suicidal”.

The surtitles person to enactment overtime but what the singers deficiency successful verbal clarity, they marque up for successful powerfulness and, erstwhile required, elegance. American bass-baritone Brandon Cedel makes Dulcamara a blustering, bullying braggart, portion successful the tiny relation of Giannetta, Segomotso Shupinyaneng proves a scene-stealer, her dependable arsenic wide and agleam arsenic her signifier presence. Belcore, the worker who threatens to thwart Nemorino’s ambitions, is present a much-decorated airman location connected leave. Dan D’Souza plays him arsenic a sweet-toned charmer with a hardly hidden nasty streak.

At times these almighty figures astir overshadow the cardinal characters. Still, Rhian Lois makes an attractive, occasionally petulant Adina, capable to conscionable Donizetti’s exorbitant vocal demands with flamboyant style. While Thomas Atkins is wholly believable arsenic shy-boy Nemorino, his dependable has an astatine times shattering intensity, yet successful the opera’s deed tune, Una furtiva lagrima (A furtive tear), helium combines warmth and vulnerability to bring the location down. Conductor Teresa Riveira Böhm makes definite that the ENO orchestra has the blend of brashness and delicacy to suit the boldness of the staging.