By Robert Croan
After starting her tenure as Florida Grand Opera’s general director with a spectacular avant-garde, high-tech staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in November 2024, Maria Todaro followed with a traditional, well-sung if visually uneventful production of Gaetano Donizetti’s melodious, undemanding old chestnut, L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) — seen Feb. 13 in Broward Center’s Au-Rene Theater.
L’elisir, first performed in Milan in 1832, was a melodramma giocoso, a semi-serious tale, in the form of an opera buffa. Its libretto is a take on the legend of Tristan and Isolde, who were brought together by a love potion. The simple country boy Nemorino enlists the services of a fraudulent medicine man, Dr. Dulcamara, to win the prettiest girl in the village, Adina.
Richard Wagner’s great tragic music drama, Tristan und Isolde, came three decades later, but Donizetti’s lighthearted masterpiece became the basis of a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof in their first full-length operetta, The Sorcerer, which premiered in 1877. L’elisir represents the golden age of bel canto, Italian musical theater in which beautiful singing was first and foremost. The score is a string of one catchy tune after another, the kind of melodies that stick in your ear long after the show is over, including one of opera’s greatest hits, the tenor’s plangent cavatina, “Una furtiva lagrima.”
FGO’s cast contained none of opera’s current stars, but the principals conveyed their music with technical aplomb, while acting out the simplistic plot with conviction. FGO’s former artistic administrator Matt Cooksey emphasized the sentimental love story over the comic elements, on a single set by Constantine Kritikos, which allowed the principals and chorus to move nimbly without distraction. On the musical side, Anthony Barrese’s deft baton work and the well-prepared chorus (by Jared Peroune) allowed the opera to proceed with ease and fluidity.
This is a tenor’s opera. Nemorino is on stage almost all the time, doing vocal (and occasionally physical) pyrotechnics, wooing the listener along with his beloved Adina. Jonah Hoskins used his medium-sized but bright and penetrating tenor, along with lots of boyish charm and athleticism in his stage manner, to win over the audience along with the heroine. He established his credentials at the start, with admirable legato singing in “Quanto è bella,” and made us alternately cry and laugh for him in the Act 1 finale, with drunken antics (and a quite good interpolated high C) followed by the opera’s saddest moment, “Adina, credimi,” when she announces that she will marry another man that very evening. His ovation after “Una furtiva lagrima” was both expected and deserved.
Adina is one of opera’s most ungrateful roles. The soprano must exude charm and spunk, while singing demanding music all through. Then, her solo turn — the exquisite cavatina, “Prendi, per me sei libero” — comes immediately after the tenor’s “Una furtiva,” and elicits no applause. Jasmine Habersham was a worthy member of the ensemble and an excellent vocalist throughout, although she undersang the opening lines of “Prendi,” picking up again in energy and éclat as the final scenes
progressed. Her best moments were in Adina’s several duets, where she had her biggest opportunities to show her vocal chops and sparkling personality.
The comic element of this opera centers on the Dr. Dulcamara, whose elaborate entrance number, “Udite, udite, o rustici,” is one of the greatest of all basso buffo arias. Although his arrival was staged to less than maximum effect, Peixin Chen took focus with a commanding bass sound, and the ability to really sing all the notes of his fast patter on pitch and with clear projection of the words.
Ricardo José Rivera made an imposing entrance as Nemorino’s nemesis, the swaggering Sergeant Belcore. His was the most impressive voice of the evening: a voluminous baritone that seemed to forecast a possible future in the major Verdi repertory. Studio artist Mary Burke Barber filled out the cast as Adina’s friend Giannetta, soloing sweetly above the ensemble in the opera’s two choral episodes.