It's a common critique directed at opera: the singing, costumes, and sets are all magnificent but the show's plot is idiotic. Although this isn't always true there's enough truth to this proposition for the sentiment to be common. No one can doubt the brilliance of Mozart's Magic Flute, but does anyone really understand the work's libretto with its tortured reversals, ordeals, and Masonic symbolism? A refreshing example of an opera with a brilliantly ingenious and well-crafted libretto is Gaetano Donizetti's The Elixir of Love (1832). The Minnesota Opera company's production of this show that I saw on February 3, 2024 skillfully exploited Donizetti's admirably plotted story for all of its comedy and romance, presenting an infectiously compelling, funny, and, even, profound experience for the audience. There's an archetypal aspect to the show -- Donizetti's characters are stereotypes, cliches, but they behave in ways that make sense within the framework of the plot. For instance, the heroine, Adina, is first seen reading from a love scene in a volume about Tristan and Isolde, a story that revolves around a fatal love potion. Although no one really believes in love potions -- these elixirs have a mythical aspect -- the characters exist in a world in which, at least, such ideas still exist, although, perhaps, in debased form. And, even, today people still believe in proud and haughty maidens, too self-sufficient to submit to the folly of love, ardent suitors whose very neediness repels their objects of affection, the allure of wealth and the depredations of predatory seducers -- all of these aspects of human life remain current and are portrayed in Donizetti's opera in a way that makes its issues and problems intensely relevant to those watching the show, now almost 200 years after it premiered.
A farm boy named Nemorino admires the beautiful and arrogant Adina. She's clearly beyond Nemorino's caste and physical attributes -- the Minnesota Opera production portrays Nemorino as a burly, clodhopper wearing blue-jean coveralls. By contrast, Adina clad in a stylish white blouse and jodhpur pants, a sort of equestrienne costume, lords it over a host of suitors. Adina likes Nemorino enough to taunt him and, no doubt, feels a faintly sexual frisson in teasing him -- but it's a love that's doomed to be unrequited. In fact, Adina boasts that she takes a different lover every day so as not to be come bored with legions of men who desire her. A quack doctor appears in town with his sidekick, the driver of the jalopy on which he enters. (The producers of the Minnesota Opera company have imagined the plot as taking place in southern California around 1916 -- the set is an attractive Spanish revival palazzo with terraces and mission-style arches and the grounds are luminous with dark green trees heavy with brilliant oranges; everyone is always carting around crates of oranges.) The quack doctor sells the opera's colorful chorus0members patent medicines good for killing bed bugs but, also for curing acne, heart palpitations, and other ailments. A bottle of rot-gut Bordeaux wine with some oranges squeezed into it is all that remains after the chorus members depart with their own bottles of snake oil. The quack convinces Nemorino that this last bottle contains the elixir of love and that, if he consumes it, women will find him irresistable -- the only problem is that it takes the elixir twenty-four hours to become efficacious (enough time for the quack to escape town before his customers discover that they have been defrauded.) A boastful military officer, a stock figure in opera, the miles glorioso, named Belcore seduces Adina who decides to humiliate Nemorino by marrying the soldier. She calls for a notary public to draw up a marriage contract, presumably because she finds Belcore attractive but, also, more importantly, so that she continue to torment the poor farm boy -- there's something unseemly and perverse about the sadistic, and ill-disguised pleasure that she takes in teasing Nemorino. But to her dismay, Nemorino, now convinced that he will soon be utterly and irremediably seductive to her, is now completely indifferent to her blandishments. He's just biding his time before the potion makes him irresistable.
After the intermission, Belcore and Adina are hosting a feast to celebrate their betrothal. Nemorino who is now convinced that he can't but succeed erotically with Adina (due to the elixir) stays away from the party. A chorus of gossiping women reveal that Nemorino's wealthy uncle has died -- thus bestowing upon Nemorino a fortune of several millions. (Nemorino remains unaware of his uncle's death). Suddenly, all the women in town begin to ardently pursue Nemorino since money, of course, is one of the truest of the true elixirs of love. Nemorino takes these women's interest in him as evidence that, of course, the elixir of love is now fully operative -- although he has also rushed matters (out of concern about Adina's imminent nuptials with the vain and boastful soldier) by purchasing yet another bottle of the elixir, claimed to be doubly potent and quicker acting. To buy this magical potion, the penniless Nemorino (as he thinks) has sold himself into the army for the recruiting price of 20 dollars. Belcore, the nasty military officer, is enthused -- not only will he enjoy Adina's charms but, also, has the pleasure of removing his rival, Nemorino, from the picture by forcing him into the army. Adina realizes that Nemorino has a noble heart and has remained loyal to her, notwithstanding the hordes of local girls now chasing him for the fortune that he is not yet aware that he possesses. Adina, nothing if not confident, proclaims that her beauty and "tender glances" will be enough to enthrall Nemorino and, so, she buys out his contract with Belcore, in effect, purchasing the farm boy for herself. Nemorino, who is still madly in love with Adina (and drunk to boot) sings a famous aria about his perception that his beloved now requites his affection -- "A furtive tear." Adina and Nemorino are united, the vain and boastful soldier departs for a "thousand other women" whom he intends to conquer, and the quack patent medicine peddler, who has concluded that the oranges squeezed into the Bordeaux have given the potion real efficacy, says adieux and leaves town as a kind of hero carrying crates of fruit on his jalopy.
All of this is performed at lightning speed accompanied by engaging music that is tuneful and vivid -- there are military marches, dance numbers, wildly flamboyant patters songs that have the flavor of two-hundred year old rap music with lyrics dissolving into wild cascades of rhyming syllables The chorus is on-stage for most of the show, engaged in various gallops ala Rossini, in which the music seems to accelerate into a frenzied, insistent, and rhythmic pulse -- the effect is not achieved by really significantly speeding up the tempo but rather by increasing the volume of the singing and music. There are duets, trios, a bacarole, and many scenes in which the chorus sings to a metronome-like beat providing a sort of continuo ornamented by woodwinds and floral outbursts by the mezzo-soprano. The entire spectacle is pervaded by a Italian sprezzatura -- that is, a bright, sparkling elan that takes pleasure in its spirited and glittering superficiality, But the opera has some important things to say about love: an overly needy and persistent lover's importuning is generally unsuccessful -- indifference attracts women more than pleading. Money is, at least, one of the true elixirs of love; equally important is the interest that other women show in the object of affection -- as soon as Nemorino is pursued by most of the eligible girls in town, Adina becomes convinced that she must win him for herself. Pride is the enemy of love. But, also, some degree of pride, at least confidence in one's own charm and sexual attractiveness and, of course, self-esteem, is also necessary to succeed at romance. Of course, the elixir is efficacious only when it is fervently believed in -- in erotic affairs, mind influences matter; the soul must be convinced before the body is willing. The quack doctor's side-kick, a handsome woman who acts the role of harlequin, the commedia dell' arte character, is instrumental to the opera and provides an amusing mocking counterpoint to show's love themes. Whenever, Nemorino anxious for any another dose of love potion approaches the doctor and his assistant and startles them they throw their arms in the air, expecting to be arrested; "Don't shoot," their gestures proclaim. Donizetti composed this marvelous work in six weeks. It is said that once a wealthy paramour paid off Donizetti's military contract to seduce him. The poor composer died of tertiary syphilis in 1848 when he was 51 and had been demented for three years -- spirochetes that he passed on to his wife and children killed them all.
The Winter Carnival was in full spate on the night I attended the opera at the Ordway in St. Paul. Rice Park was full of people and fire trucks, the vehicles usually occupied by the Vulcans with the soot-blackened cheeks and foreheads, were parked alongside the curb where men sprayed huge gouts of fire into the air from furnaces used to loft hot-air balloons in the air. The plumes of fire hissed melodramatically and ascended thirty feet in the air. All the trees in the park were garnished with strings of fairy lights and crowds blocked the roadways waving lighted wands and hoops in air. On the street corner. a preacher stood on some sort of rickety platform screaming at passers-by, flanked by a half-dozen somber confused-looking teenagers bearing anti-homosexual signs and gruesome images of aborted fetuses. The air smelled wet, like Spring, and the last tincture of sunset shone ever the bluffs beyond the High Bridge. Sirens sounded and revelers stormed here and there and, at every intersection, barricades and police lights were whirling in the grim, grey canyons between buildings.
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