The Elixir of Love Tickets

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti, born in 1797, was an Italian composer best known for writing almost seventy operas, an extraordinary career. This inventive new setting breathes new life into The Elixir of Love, an already very popular opera.

The Elixir of Love - The Story

This time around Donizetti’s opera buffa – AKA romantic comedy – is staged as an episode in a TV sitcom, a lovely story of unrequited love that kicks off with the arrival of a salesman peddling love potions on a country estate where local people and Land Girls are working.

The plot goes like this. A young boy, Nemorino, takes a love potion supplied by a dodgy travelling salesman, keen to overcome his chronic shyness and win the love of posh Adina, the landowner. In fact, the magical love potion is nothing more than red wine. But he’s convinced it is working, and the placebo effect is powerful. Will Nemorino win Adina’s heart?

In a show widely known as one of the best ever bel canto operas, the words ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ or ‘I saw the tear’, sung by the character Nemorino during Act Two, might just be the world’s most famous aria. The music, the lyrics and the genuinely moving moments in the plot enhance its famous warmth and humour.

The Elixir of Love cast and creatives

The acclaimed soprano and former Harewood artist Rhian Lois will be singing the role of Adina. The Welsh soprano has been praised by Opera Today for her 'flawlessly produced soprano and her highly musical singing', one of the most captivating, versatile singers on the opera scene.

The production also spotlights Director Harry Fehr, who makes his English National Opera début. His recent productions include Semele (Blackheath Halls Opera), La sonnambula (Buxton Festival), Sir John in Love (British Youth Opera), and a double bill of Debussy’s L’enfant prodigue and Philip Hagemann’s Poison, Passion & Petrifaction (Pegasus Opera Company).

He’s joined by the brilliant Austrian-Spanish conductor Teresa Riveiro Böhm, also an ENO novice. She is establishing herself as a powerful force in the orchestral and operatic worlds, winner of the Neeme-Järvi-Prize at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival in 2019. She has conducted orchestras and opera companies across Europe and Australia.

Come and see this beautiful balance between story and song, yours to fall in love with in the capital, on stage at the London Coliseum.