A new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s melodramma giocoso L’elisir d’amore is being rehearsed at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre. The first performances will take place on 28 and 29 March and 10 and 28 April. This will be the ninth production of L’elisir d’amore by the Kirov-Mariinsky Theatre and the first at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre.
The opera is being staged by Alexander Petrov. The repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre includes several operas directed by Alexander Petrov – Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Concert Hall and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the theatre itself. Productions by Alexander Petrov, the founder and tireless director of the Zazerkalye children’s music theatre, make no claim to complex cultural contexts or seek to find some new directing lexis and stand apart for their dynamism, playfulness and the natural embodiment of the music onstage.
In his production of L’elisir d’amore, the stage director underlines the opera’s specific genre – at one and the same time a sentimental melodrama and a comedy based on a touching and naive love story that makes people cry and laugh...
Alexander Petrov sees the main charm of Donizetti’s opera in the “tremendous number of details scattered throughout the music. L’elisir d’amore was written in just two weeks, but Donizetti managed to produce a surprisingly subtle score with abundant interesting musical and stage details. These details are not always visible and it is the stage director’s task to reveal them and bring them to life in the action onstage. It is very engaging work, and the marvellous cast of Mariinsky Theatre singers makes it all even more interesting.”
The opera was composed in 1832. By that time, Donizetti had already written thirty-nine operas. On this occasion, the impresario of the Teatro della Canobbiana, Milan’s second largest theatre, commissioned an opera to be written in a short period to help the theatre out of difficulties. In a couple of weeks an undoubted masterpiece had been written – an opera that was to become one of the most popular in the world.
The opera is being rehearsed by Karina Chepurnova, Zhanna Dombrovskaya, Aida Garifullina and Oxana Shilova (Adina), Stanislav Leontiev, Daniil Shtoda, Sergei Skorokhodov and Dmitry Voropaev (Nemorino), Roman Burdenko, Viktor Korotich and Sergei Romanov (Belcore) Nikolai Kamensky and Andrei Serov (Dr Dulcamara) and Elena Karpesh, Svetlana Kiselyova and Oxana Krupnova (Giannetta).
Conductor – Pavel Bubelnikov; Production Designer – Vladimir Firer; Lighting Designer – Alexei Tarasov; Musical Preparation – Valery Gergiev.
