L’elisir d’amore – Glyndebourne

Last Updated on June 16, 2026

Love is the Drug

Last night I was at the Royal Opera House for the visceral new production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. Today I’m in the sunshine at Glyndebourne for Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, a frothy bel canto confection of romance, charm and glorious melodies. The contrast couldn’t be starker, and that diversity of experience is one of the glories of the art form.

It’s the second day of the Glyndebourne season which opened yesterday with Don Giovanni. The sun is shining, the champagne corks are popping and it feels like summer has arrived. If you want to check out our recommendations from this year’s offerings, have a look at our 2023 guide here. 

L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) is a two-act comic opera composed in a hurry by Donizetti in 1832 with its premiere in Milan the same year. Felice Romani’s libretto for the opera was a reworking of Eugène Scribe’s words for Daniel Auber’s opera Le philtre that had opened the previous year. Donizetti’s opera has maintained its position as one of the mainstays of the international opera repertory since then. Glyndebourne’s production this year is a revival of director Annabel Arden’s 2007 production with the revival directed by Sinéad O’Neill. 

The story centres around the love story that plays out between educated, beautiful, rich landowner Adina, and Nemorino, a country bumpkin with a good heart who embodies the Romantic notion of ‘sincerity’. Nemorino is besotted with the standoffish Adina who in turn falls for a self-confident soldier, Sargeant Belcore, who is passing through town with his regiment of comedic soldiers. Nemorino turns to Dulcamara, a visiting quack doctor, from whom he buys a love elixir which will make him irresistible to all women within 24 hours. Unknown to Nemorino, his rich uncle has died leaving a fortune to his nephew. Once the local girls get wind of the news about the windfall, Nemorino suddenly does become the hottest bachelor in town. But to raise the money for a second dose of the elixir Nemorino had signed up to the army. In the meantime, Adina has had second thoughts about marrying the cocksure Sargeant and realised that she has feelings for Nemorino. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing Adina and Nemorino end up together, with the jilted Sargeant Belcore accepting the situation on the basis that he can have any woman he wanted. In many ways the narrative is lightweight nonsense which is normal for opera buffa; but Romani’s libretto has an emotional authenticity which when combined with Donizetti’s gorgeous comedic and romantic score, transcends the genre and creates moments of sublimity and depth.

Annabel Arden’s production is set in designer Lez Brotherston’s take on an idealised and bucolic 1940s Italian village – imagine the flashback scenes in The Godfather – with the stage bisected by the frontage of a shabby chic manor house which sits on a raised slightly angled plinth. It creates an evocative frame for the opera’s shenanigans. In the opening scene, the peasant workers are enjoying lazing around and not having to work in the heat of the day.

Adina is played by British soprano Nardus Williams (winner of the Rising Star Award at the 2022 International Opera Awards) who swishes onto the stage dressed in ivory Marlene Dietrich style trousers on her first entrance to wash her feet at the village pump. Williams plays Adina as being confident, intelligent and empowered, although the character briefly loses her way when it comes to affairs of the heart as we all do. Williams’ voice is a thing of beauty, well-controlled with a silky texture that opens into a delicate upper register that suits Donizetti’s writing Her first big aria “Della crudele Isotta” (Of the cruel Isolda) in a neat intertextual twist has her reading the story of Tristan and Isolde with its love potion to the attentive peasants. Nemorino picks up on the idea and so the plot is set on its merry way. When she sings “Prendi, per me sei libero” (Take it, I have freed you) in Act 2, Williams’ characterisation matures as she offers Nemorino freedom from his self-imposed military servitude with her voice projecting a restrained spirituality that suits the moment.

Italian tenor Matteo Desole makes his Glyndebourne debut as the hapless and timid Nemorino. Desole makes a convincingly unsophisticated lover at the start of the opera bringing a Neapolitan lilt to Act 1’s sublime “Quanto è bella, quanto è cara” (How beautiful she is). By Act 2’s “Una furtiva lagrima” (A furtive tear) with its plangent bassoon 6/8 melody, the opera’s big hit song, Nemorino has become more self-confident and Desole held the auditorium in the palm of his hand. A fine debut! Desole and Williams are well-matched vocally with Act 1’s “Lalaralara, esulti pur la barbara” (Let the barbarian rejoice!) being a delight.

Italian baritone Biagio Pizzuti is excellent as the pompous, self-aggrandising Belcore, setting out his stall to Adina in the narcissistic “Come Paride vezzoso” (Just as the charming Paris).

But the show is almost stolen by bass Renato Girolami who plays the huckster Dr Dulcamara, arriving with great fanfare on stage with an umbrella in the colours of the Italian flag. The well-dressed fraudster seems very credible and sophisticated to the naïve peasants – he says of Nemorini “I’ve met some idiots in the provinces, but this one takes the biscuit”.

The Barcarole (Venetian boating gondolier’s song) duet with Adina “Io son ricco e tu sei bella” (I am rich, and you are beautiful) in Act 2 is a highlight of the production with Girolami as Dulcamara ably assisted by the extraordinary comedic physical theatre of his assistant played by Maxime Nourissat. Nourissat is dressed in a top hat that sports a long red feather and a long black coat with his body covered with harlequinesque tattoos. He is involved in lots of onstage business, from the bawdily comic to slapstick and brings a refreshingly different kinetic energy to the opera stage.