Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Imagine if the early 19th-century composers of Italian opera, such as Rossini and Donizetti, were alive today. They could tune in to a television sitcom and recognise just the kind of comedy that they made so popular in their time. They might even do a sideline in supplying the music.That is the idea behind English National Opera’s new production at the London Coliseum of Donizetti’s romantic comedy The Elixir of Love, directed by Harry Fehr. During the overture we watch a TV screen as the credits roll, announcing each of the characters transported to 1940s England, like an episode of the BBC classic Dad’s Army.In this setting, well-off Adina has moved a notch up the social scale. She is now mistress of a seriously large estate, to judge from the size of the kitchens in Nicky Shaw’s imaginative design. The drawing room, with its plush sofas and imposing windows looking out over the gardens, is ripe to be taken over by the National Trust.The ambience is familiar from TV period dramas (think Downton Abbey) and the reticent romance of Adina and farmworker Nemorino fits comfortably into this very English world. The young couple are also nicely played. Rhian Lois, a former ENO Harewood Artist, taunts her timid suitor with barbs of cruelty and, though the voice has its strident side early on, she warms later. The moment when she realises that Nemorino really loves her touches the heart.As usual, the success of the opera rests on the shoulders, here coyly hunched, of the overawed Nemorino. New Zealander Thomas Atkins, also a former young artist but at the Royal Opera, does a poignant line in shy glances and nervous hand-wringing, matched by a modest half-voice as if nervous of making himself heard. He delivers a very touching “Una furtiva lagrima”, but a theatre of this size would benefit from him singing out more. It is not as though Atkins is short of voice, as we hear from his ringing top notes.The army recruits have become Royal Air Force trainees, so Belcore is now a flying ace, played by Dan D’Souza as a dour, strict figure rather than the usual grinning Lothario, but he sings strongly as the performance progresses. The scene in which he gets Nemorino to sign up to the RAF, and some of the other young pilots take the sensitive fellow through some vigorous physical exercises, is a comic high-point. Brandon Cedel, familiar from comic roles at Glyndebourne, has the voice and stature for Dulcamara, though he could make the text sparkle more brilliantly. Segomotso Shupinyaneng sings an attractive Giannetta, and her scene with the village girls fawning over Nemorino was the best of a night, the chorus shining.The generous acoustic of the Coliseum often makes an orchestra sound heavy, and conductor Teresa Riveiro Böhm, though lively enough, does not manage to counteract that. It is brave, though, of ENO to field such an enjoyable, handsome-looking, full-scale production at a time when the company’s future teeters on a cliff edge.★★★★☆To December 5, eno.org
