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1. L’elisir d’amore is an entertaining story with simple characters—in the same spirit as The Abduction from the Seraglio, and unlike, say, the deeper human characters of La bohème.
- Are there still ways in which we identify with them?
- How does the human depth of the characters affect your response to an opera?
2. Stage director James Robinson told the Denver Post, “People always think that universal is general, and universal isn’t general—it’s specific. We can relate to people if we view them specifically, if it’s our shared experience.” Thus he casts Nemorino as an ice cream vendor, for example, rather than just a country boy in love.
- Do you agree?
- How is our relationship with these characters affected by knowing some details about them?
3. Most performances of L’elisir d’amore keep the traditional setting of a pastoral nineteenth-century Basque or Italian village. Some move the village to the twentieth century, and Glyndebourne this season specifies  olive groves. Our early twentieth-century Americana, however, is not the only production with a transplanted setting. France’s Opéra national de Lyon offers a DVD of a production by Frank Dunlop, starring Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, that casts Elisir in the 1920s—a production that reminded New York Times critic David Mermelstein of The Most Happy Fella. England’s Opera North moved the story to a 1950s café and had Dr. Dulcamara arrive in a balloon.
- Where else could you imagine transplanting the story of L’elisir d’amore? What details would change for the sake of your setting? What elements would remain the same?
- What makes an opera work (or not) in a new setting?
- Can you think of operas that should not be transplanted?
4. The elements of wealth and class are part of all four of Boston Lyric Opera’s productions this season, with poverty and hunger motivating the plots of La bohème and Hansel and Gretel, and nobles and servants populating the world of The Abduction from the Seraglio.
- How essential are those elements in L’elisir d’amore?
- Are the implications of wealth and class different to a Boston audience in 2007 from what they were to the audience at the premiere in Milan in 1832?
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