| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 16-Apr-2013 Blacks | Donizetti as you've never seen him before: Pop-Up Opera at Blacks in Soho |
 The tiny room at the top of Soho members’ club Blacks is not the first venue most directors would choose to stage an opera, but Pop-Up Opera is not an ordinary production company. Established only two years ago by Guildhall School of Music and Drama graduate Clementine Lovell (playing café owner Adina in this production), the company aims to bring a traditionally exclusive art form out of the opera house and into the lives of average people.Read full review... | |
| 12-Feb-2013 King's Head Theatre, Islington | L'elisir d'amore with OperaUpClose |
 Donizetti’s melodramma giocoso in two acts, L’elisir d’amore, is a light-hearted tale of love overcoming all obstacles, with the help of a little “love potion”. Tonight’s performance, in the intimate space of the King’s Head Theatre, was updated to Hollywood: the beautiful actress Adina (Una Reynolds) is being courted by Sergeant Belcore (Marc Callahan), who wants her as a “trophy wife” – much to the dismay of the lowly gardener Nemorino (Alex Vearey-Roberts), who is completely, heartbreakingly, in love with Adina.Read full review... | |
| 13-Nov-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Donizetti's elixir is still a winning formula at Covent Garden |
 ASHMORE-bt.jpg) Take one hapless but lovable hero, one capricious but ultimately vulnerable heroine, a doctor and an army officer straight out of commedia dell’arte, a couple of basso buffo patter songs, at least one memorable romantic ballad, and stir the lot into a good lashing of boisterous Italian music with a sprinkling of furtive tears. Donizetti’s formula for L’Elisir d’Amore may not have made all the girls fall at his feet, it did bring him money and enduring fame beyond even the wildest predictions that could have been made by the quack Dr. Dulcamara.
Read full review... | |
| 8-May-2012 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | AVA’s memorable "L'Elisir d'Amore" with outstanding tenor Diego Silva |
 Though most of Gaetano Donizetti’s operas are not well known, Donizetti wrote dozens of them – many of the silly variety. L’Elisir d’Amore is one frothy work that not only survived, but continues to be performed around the world – frequently. L’Elisir d’Amore has a formulaic storyline: it’s war time (pick a war, any war). A lonely boy falls for a very pretty girl. The pretty girl plays hard to get. The boy drinks a love potion. Circumstances and a soldier in a snappy uniform keep boy and girl apart until the boy inherits a fortune.Read full review... | |
