Description
Donizetti: L'Elisir d'amore / Playful melodrama in two acts / Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris / Conductor: Edward Gardner / HD recording: Opéra national de Paris / DVD
Format: NTSC
Run time: 133 Minutes
UPC: 3760115300408
- Aspect Ratio : 1.78:1
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches; 3.2 Ounces
- Item model number : BAC040
- Director : Laurent Pelly
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, AC-3, Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Widescreen, Surround Sound
- Run time : 2 hours and 13 minutes
- Release date : November 11, 2008
- Actors : Heidi Grant Murphy, Paul Groves, Laurent Naouri, Ambrogio Maestri, Aleksandra Zamojska
- Subtitles: : English
- Language : Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1), Italian (DTS 5.1), Italian (PCM Stereo)
- Studio : Bel Air Classiques
- Number of discs : 1
L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love, pronounced [leliˈzir daˈmoːre]) is a melodramma giocoso (comic melodrama, opera buffa) in two acts by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's Le philtre (1831). The opera premiered on 12 May 1832 at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan.
Written in haste in a six-week period, L'elisir d'amore was the most often performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848 and has remained continually in the international opera repertory. Today it is one of the most frequently performed of all Donizetti's operas: it appears as number 13 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide in the five seasons between 2008 and 2013. There are a large number of recordings. It contains the popular tenor aria "Una furtiva lagrima", a romanza that has a considerable performance history in the concert hall.
Donizetti insisted on a number of changes from the original libretto by Scribe. The best known of these was the insertion of "Una furtiva lagrima" and the duet between Adina and Nemorino in the first act, "Chiedi all'aura lusinghiera". The melody to the duet "Io son ricco e tu sei bella" in act 2, scene 1 recurs in the final scene of the opera sung by Dulcamara as a solo aria with new scabrous lyrics.
The central narrative theme, the triumph of sincerity, is essential to the Romantic outlook; musically, in Donizetti's hands, the treatment became more romantic than in the Auber version: L'elisir d'amore features three big duets between the tenor and soprano. There is also personal history in this opera. Donizetti's military service was bought by a rich woman, so that, unlike his brother Giuseppe (also a well known composer), he did not have to serve in the Austrian army.
