Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore – in English: The Elixir of Love – has been intoxicating entire generations: It would be hard to find another musical comedy that has generated more stubbornly catchy tunes, a more noble cheerfulness and more sustained laughter. More than 200 years old, The Elixir of Love is potentially addictive – but it is an entirely harmless drug. A timid youth with an inclination to develop crushes falls in love – unhappily, at first – with a well-heeled, slightly capricious beauty. The old trickster Dulcamara, a quack, mountebank and street vendor, brews the eponymous magic potion which soon has all the emotions and melodies bubbling over. The vain philanderer Belcore and the ever-commenting people choir folks complete the dramatis personae for an eventful day under the Southern sun.

This musical style is not called “Belcanto”, beautiful singing, without reason. Donizetti’s musical cabinet pieces are of high virtuosity and exuberant splendour: melodic lustre, dashing arias, and a series of images depicting the Italian feeling of dolce vita. And there is even a little bit of tragedy to round off the atmosphere. Tobias Ribitzki’s staging exaggerates old theatre traditions into a trashy medieval show in cardboard scenery and spans a great arc of opera clichés from adoration from the audience to star behaviour in the footlights across the entire orchestra pit.