A DASH OF BASIL FAWLTY BRINGS BERLIOZ TO LIFE
The Elixir Of Love Pavillion, Dún Laoghaire Touring until Dec. 13
After an early production of Elixir, Hector Berlioz reported that the audience were talking out loud, that others were gambling or eating and he could barely hear the music.
The only audience noise at this production was a great deal of laughter because Opera Theatre Company’s welcome reappearance emphasises the fun in the work without overlooking the serious side. It’s the sort of production that gives opera a good name.
Above all, this production has a whopper of a performance by John Molloy as the snake-oil salesman Dulcamara. He takes over the stage like a combination of Basil Fawlty and Del Boy, selling the poor lovestruck Nemorino a potion to help him win the beautiful Adina. And he does it all with a splendid vocal range and notably perfect diction, which is less perfect with others.
But Elixir has such a simple plot that even when some words are unclear you can still easily follow the plot. Purists might argue that some of the fun is over the top, and in the final scenes Adina and Nemorino have to follow some farcical romps with demanding arias, but nothing gets in the way of the refreshingly tuneful music that runs through the work.
It’s given a modern college background, where Adina is a lecturer and the chorus are students. The love potion idea doesn’t seem archaic because it’s sold here as a combination potion and aphrodisiac with a plot that makes sense of it.
There are excellent performances from Anna Patalong as Adina, James Mc-Oran-Campbell as Nemorino’s brash love rival, and Anthony Flaum gets the most out of the work’s best-known aria, Una Furtiva Lagrima.
Wexford, Dec 2; Kilkenny, Dec 7; Galway Dec 9; Dundalk Dec 11; Navan Dec 13.