L’Elisir d’Amore review – la dolce vita comes to Donizetti's opera

Can there be any greater cure for the February blues than Opera North’s Elixir of Love? It must be said that, like the vintage Vespa scooters puttering back and forth across the piazza, Daniel Slater’s production has been around the block a few times (it was first produced in 2000). But, like a favourite holiday spot, the elegant hotel terrace featured in Robert Innes Hopkins’s design is the kind of place you’d happily go back to.

Perhaps the only thing that never quite added up in this Fellini-esque paradise was that everyone appeared to speak English. It’s significant that for this revival, the title has reverted to the original and the piece is now sung in surtitled Italian. There are gains and losses here: I miss the directness of David Parry’s perky translation, and it slightly diminishes the production’s appeal as the perfect introduction for anyone who fears that opera may be difficult to understand.

Then again, Slater’s direction is full of visual comedy that requires no explanation –a drunk Elvis Presley impersonation is a drunk Elvis Presley impersonation in any language – and it enables Opera North to engage a more cosmopolitan cast. The exciting young Romanian soprano Gabriela Iştoc repeats the splash she made as Mimi a couple of seasons ago. Would she have learned the role of Adina in English just to sing it in Leeds? Probably not.

The South Korean tenor Jung Soo Yun is equally impressive as Nemorino, played as a hapless hotel dogsbody blessed with the kind of voice that suggests he needn’t be waiting tables for very much longer. Duncan Rock is splendidly self-involved as the vacuous officer Belcore, and Richard Burkhard great value as the straw-hatted charlatan Dr Dulcamara. Tobias Ringborg’s conducting is fresh, fizzy and vibrant enough to suggest that those Vespas still have plenty of miles on the clock yet.

• At the Grand theatre, Leeds, until 27 February. Box office: 0844 848 2700. Then touring until 17 March.