Julietta Aleksanyan

A sweltering Italian summer evening. The romantic tension between Adina and Nemorino electrifies the air. But they are not alone. A group of friends puts their love and social standing at risk. Director Marcos Darbyshire’s contemporary version of Donizetti’s comic opera L’elisir d’amore is a coming-of-age opera exploring identity and loss of innocence. ‘There will be a lot of laughter, but with rather than at the characters’ promises the director. The all-Dutch co-production between Opera Zuid, Dutch National Touring Opera and Dutch National Opera features an excellent young cast from the Dutch National Opera Studio.

The libretto of the most well known opera by Dvořak, which premiered in Prague in 1901, is inspired by the Czech version of the Central European folktale, one we also know as Undine (1811) by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué or The Little Mermaid (1837) by Hans Christian Andersen.