{TABLE} L'Elisir d'amore ......... Donizetti {/TABLE} OPERA Ireland's new L'Elisir d'amore is a rather strange amalgam, a Donizetti production that's generally better to look at than to listen to. Designer Bernard Culshaw has created an open, crooked house style of set, which, with three different levels of angled floor, gives the Gaiety's small stage a welcome feeling of depth, which was generally well sustained by Paul Keogan's lighting.
The set's large, clear areas of pastel colours contrast with the severe black and white of the chorus; colour in this production is by and large reserved for the principals.
On the evidence of this production, director Mike Ashman doesn't really seem to feel that L'Elisir d'amore is a zippy comic opera. But then, with the vocal weaknesses of the cast that he's got, not to mention the whipalong conducting of Mark Shanahan, he may not have had a lot to go on.
The strongest performance comes from Majella Cullagh, who offers as uncoquettish an Adina as I've seen. This, we are to believe is a woman who is fully aware of her worth, much more level headed in behaviour than she describes herself in song. As is the case with the rest of the cast, her voice is on the light side. But, unlike her colleagues, she sings with presence and point (though sometimes not entirely convincingly in style).
. Happily, her singing gained in the second act and she was in commanding form for some of the opera's most demanding moments. Judging by the audience response, her performance here has to be seen as a very special personal success.
It was hard to imagine, however, that such a lady would find anything of interest in the ineffectual Nemorino of David Newman, small of voice and frequently fractured of tone. More than love potions or inheritances would be needed to put a good face on this particulars young peasant.
Roderick Earle was disappointing as the quack, Dulcamara; there's not much to be said for a singer in this role who can't get convincingly around the patter. Steven Page as the sergeant, Belcore, though easily the most efficient of the men, had more an air of routine efficiency than of military swagger or command.
The chorus were in generally strong voice (there's a need, though, for them to work at communicative singing at volume levels significantly below forte and the members of the RTE Concert Orchestra responded all too willingly to the energetic but regrettably uusubtle urgings of Mark Shanahan.
