The love potion

With »L'elisir d'amore«, the »love potion«, Gaetano Donizetti, who had already written over 30 compositions for the opera stage by the time the work premiered in Milan in 1832, was able to celebrate one of his greatest successes. The Italian designation of the work as a melodramma giocoso, also known as a comédie larmoyante by connoisseurs, describes the extraordinary character of this opera, which does not revolve around a traditional buffa intrigue with stylised characters, but which - despite all the comedy - is about serious emotions. For example, Donizetti deliberately put the melancholy romance »Una furtiva lagrima« into the mouth of the young peasant Nemorino, who has fallen madly in love with his landlady Adina - soon to become the opera's most famous aria. Even before the shy Nemorino can confess his love to the well-read and proud Adina, he is confronted with a rival in the form of the sergeant Belcore and relies on the effects of a love potion that he acquires from the travelling miracle doctor Dulcamara. The simple wine that the enterprising Dulcamara sells him boosts Nemorino's self-confidence in a way that increasingly irritates Adina. The fact that Nemorino spontaneously allows himself to be recruited by the soldiers instead of taking care of his inheritance in order to buy a second love potion for the hand money impresses Adina: for the first time in her life, she feels truly loved.