Donizetti – L’elisir d’amore

Adina – Lavinia Bini
Nemorino – Valerio Borgioni
Belcore – Jan Antem
Dulcamara – Vincenzo Taormina
Giannetta – Elena Borin

Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / Diego Ceretta.
Stage director – Victor García Sierra.

Teatro Comunale di Bologna – Comunale Nouveau, Bologna, Italy.  Saturday, November 25th, 2023.

As is customary at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, this run of L’elisir d’amore was double cast.  In the cast that opened the run last night, were experienced singers such as Karen Gardeazabal and Juan Francisco Gatell.  In this alternate cast, the house offered us younger singers, highlighting the new generation of bel canto talents.  Both casts are being led from the pit by Diego Ceretta.

The production was confided to Victor García Sierra and, as far as I can recall, is my first experience of his work.  He sets the action in the world of the circus, complete with people on stilts and a large circus tent that takes up the centre of the set.  It’s certainly a colourful and playful setting for this most colourful and joyful of operas.  The direction of the chorus was rather inconsistent.  At times, they were simply parked on stage to engage in some occasional light gyrations.  At others, such as when the women tried to seduce Nemorino after discovering his fortune, the direction of the chorus was considerably more vivid.  García even asked Lavinia Bini’s Adina to cycle on stage and dispatch some elegant lines in her duet with Dulcamara in Act 2 – which she did without ever compromising her breath control.

As will the be case for the next while, the evening was performed in the Comunale’s temporary home in the Bologna Fiera, around a forty-minute walk from downtown.  The acoustic is actually fairly serviceable, but having Nemorino sing his ‘furtiva lagrima’, and Adina and Nemorino sing the subsequent scene, in front of a black curtain wasn’t the most optimal use of the acoustic setting.  Neither was having Dulcamara sing his closing number from within the audience, with acrobats and circus artists running around the audience, while the remainder of the cast sang from the stage.  This left a sense of acoustic separation that was less than ideal – although the audience appeared to absolutely love it.  That said, having Nemorino and Adina sing that penultimate scene in front of a very simple background was probably the most enchanting moment of the evening, even though the spell was then broken by the appearance of the stilt walkers.  García certainly gives us a serviceable enough staging, one that does what it needs to do, even if it feels a little inconsistent in its execution.

Musically, there was so much to enjoy.  I’ll start with a reservation, however, and that was Ceretta’s conducting.  There were some good things there – the elegance of the phrasing that he obtained from the Comunale orchestra was as delightful as anything we heard from the stage. And yet, I found his tempi rather pedestrian, lacking in vigour.  Attack in the strings was soft grained, although it was precise.  Strings also played with full vibrato throughout.  I longed for Ceretta to ask the strings to reduce the vibrato, to sharpen the attack, and to give us much more rhythmic propulsion as we went through.  Instead, the evening ambled along gently.  Naturally, the orchestra played with great beauty, the poetry of the clarinets and the solo bassoon was genuinely beguiling.  The chorus, prepared by Gea Garatti Ansini, sang with genuine enthusiasm and generosity of sound. 

Valerio Borgioni.  Note that name because I predict we’re going to hear a lot more of this young man.  He’s only 26 but has a glorious natural gift.  When he began to sing, I have to admit to my eyes welling up with tears because here was a genuine Italian lyric tenor, of easy ping and wonderfully luminous tone.  This is a voice filled with bright sunshine, one that fills the house with ease simply because it’s so bright and forwardly-placed.  He sang his ‘furtiva lagrima’ with genuine beauty, varying the dynamics expertly, shading the tone, singing on long, languid lines.  The audience responded with an enormous and generous ovation, with cries of ‘bis’, to which Borgioni graciously obliged, singing it the second time around with even more beauty.  There are, however, two things that concern me.  The top does thin out slightly and sounds that he does have a bit more work there to integrate it.  The other is that he really does have a rare gift and I very much hope that he has the right people around him to guide and advise him, so that he can enjoy a very long and successful career.  Look out for him.

Bini also gave us a delightful Adina.  The voice has an attractive duskiness with a nice fizz of vibrato on top, with a beguiling smile to the tone that I found irresistible in this role.  She has all the bel canto tools at her disposal – the ability to float long, elegant lines, to turn the corners with ease and freedom, and a genuine trill.  I did wish that she had taken some more risks with the line, to embellish it more creatively and make it truly her own – but that may also have been a decision of the conductor.  Still, Bini is also a very exciting talent and another to look out for.

As Belcore, Jan Antem was delightfully dashing.  His baritone is nicely even from top to bottom and he savoured the text with the utmost clarity.  His opening number demonstrated how impeccable his command of the passaggio is.  Vincenzo Taormina gave us a fabulously extrovert Dulcamara, all sung off the text.  His baritone is quite bright in tone and he has an implicit understanding of how this music should go.  He’s a fantastically engaging stage presence and he genuinely seemed to be having the time of his life singing his closing number from within the audience.  Elena Borin sang Giannetta with an agreeably healthy-sounding soprano and threw herself enthusiastically into the stage action.

This was a highly enjoyable evening in the theatre, one that gave us the opportunity to enjoy exciting new talents in a serviceable and efficient staging.  Yes, the conducting was rather pedestrian in approach, but the singing was absolutely terrific.  We have much to be pessimistic about these days.  Yet based on the evidence of tonight, the future of bel canto in Italy is very much assured.  The audience responded at the close with warmth and generosity to the entire cast.