Love in a Cool Climate

ENO's new production of Donizetti's comedy

Quack’s potion: Thomas Atkins (Nemorino), Brandon Cedel (Dulcamara) Picture © Marc Brenner

Ever since John Copley directed his classic traditional staging of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at Covent Garden in 1975, British directors have vied with each other to set the story in a different time and location. The 1940s American corn-belt (English Touring Opera, 1993) remains one of my favourites, but more recently Opera North, Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera have brought us back to Italy - to the seaside in Daniel Slater’s sunny production for the Leeds company, to a small town square in Annabel Arden’s for the Sussex festival, and to a countryside smallholding in Laurent Pelly’s 2007 staging in Bow Street.

All four glowed in the sunlight of Donizetti’s most ingratiating comic work. This marvellous opera has been less lucky at English National Opera, whose first production was set in an east European communist dystopia, and whose latest version turns it into a sort of humorous Brideshead Revisited, Downton Abbey or Upstairs Downstairs. I must confess that an ‘Elixir of Love’ set on a World War II aristocratic estate had not occurred to me, though of course class issues lie at the heart of this feelgood rags-to-riches tale of the country yokel who wins the reluctant heart of the lady of the manor - set to Donizetti’s most delectable tunes.

This is Harry Fehr's first staging for ENO, and with his designers Nicky Shaw (sets), Zahra Mansouri (costumes), Mark Jonathan (lighting) and Matt Powell (video) he has put together a handsome, eminently revivable and generally well-directed production. At curtain-up we are presented an animated front cloth resembling an early colour television screen - a harmless anachronism I suppose, underlining the ‘Oh! What A Lovely War’ feel of the show, especially when Belcore’s sidekicks appear in RAF uniforms and are welcomed by a chorus waving little union flags. All harmless fun-poking at British patriotism.