L’Elisir d’Amore, Royal Opera House, review: 'real emotion'

This jolly revival of Donizetti's comedy is guaranteed to send audiences home smiling, says Rupert Christiansen

Lucy Crowe in L'Elisir d'Amore at the Royal Opera House Credit: Photo: Alastair Muir

After all the intellectual pretensions and doomy gloom purveyed by the Royal Opera in recent months, what a relief to relax with a jolly revival of Donizetti’s bucolic comedy L’Elisir d’amore.

Laurent Pelly’s 2007 staging, updated to post-war Italy but mercifully free from directorial quirks, is pitched just the right side of downright farce. It’s odd that it does so little to suggest the social divide between wealthy landowner Adina and peasant Nemorino, but in other respects it hits the mark, with some merry comic routines and guest appearances from a dog and a tractor, as well as enough real emotion to pull at the audiences’ heart-strings in the final scenes.

Vittorio Grigolo was making his house debut as Nemorino. I quite understand why some people find this young Italian tenor preposterously puffed-up: he’s a relentless “Footlights Fanny”, and there’s something self-conscious and manipulative about his simpering ickle-boy act.

But never mind the showing-off, this pup unarguably gives a hundred per cent, creating here a totally credible and ultimately endearing character of a bronzed type you can find renting deckchairs on any Italian beach. Perhaps he doesn’t have quite the sweetness of tone ideal for the role, but “Adina, credimi” and “Una furtiva lagrima” were sung with genuine sensibility, and he projects text and shapes phrases thoughtfully.

He meets his match in Lucy Crowe, who chalks up another impressive success as a beguiling but steely Adina. Her light lyric soprano – pliant, silvery, easy at the top – is a perfect fit for music which she expresses with insouciant ease and charm. Crisper enunciation wouldn’t come amiss, and she faded a little after a ravishing “Prendi per me”, but it’s clearly high time this outstanding British talent was dispatched to Donizetti’s Lammermoor.

Casting Bryn Terfel as the quack Dulcamara is like applying a hammer to a nut, and lighter buffos such as Andrew Shore or Alessandro Corbelli have made more of the patter with fewer vocal resources. Terfel’s superb comic timing and genial presence compensate. Levente Molnar underplayed Belcore, but did a good job none the less.

In the pit, things were breezily conducted by Daniele Rustioni, who has an instinctive feel for the score’s pulse and temper. Even if ensemble went a bit fuzzy on the first night, things will surely settle down nicely during a run of performances guaranteed to send audiences home smiling.

Until 9 December; www.roh.org.uk