Donizetti – L’Elisir d’Amore
ONP Bastille, Friday November 3, 2006 Conductor: Edward Gardner. Production and costumes: Laurent Pelly. Sets: Chantal Thomas. Adina: Heidi Grant Murphy. Nemorino: Charles Castronovo. Belcore: Laurent Naouri. Dulcamara: Alberto Rinaldi. Giannetta: Aleksandra Zamojska. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris. Director Laurent Pelly has entertained Lyon and Paris with a string of successful comic opera productions (broken by Ariadne auf Naxos, the dud that proves the rule) now more widely known thanks to DVD: Orphée aux Enfers, La Belle Hélène, La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein, Platée … His L’Elisir d’Amore exudes a freshness and youthful joie de vivre rarely experienced in the opera house, successfully reproducing the carefree atmosphere of Italian cinema in the 50s and 60s. The simple sets – stacks of hay bales, one of them covered with tarpaulins held down with tyres; a patch of ground by a country crossroads, with a café and a lean-to housing plastic crates; a d...