"Una furtiva lagrima" (1832)
The Act II romanza in B flat minor, prefaced by a solo bassoon; Caruso, Gigli and Pavarotti all made it a calling card
Recording: Enrico Caruso, Gaetano Donizetti · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · Italian opera
L'elisir d'amore
12 May 1832, Teatro della Canobbiana, Milan
Gaetano Donizetti · libretto by Felice Romani
A melodramma giocoso in two acts, written at speed to fill a gap in a Milan season. A shy peasant, Nemorino, loves the landowner Adina, who teases him; a travelling quack, Dulcamara, sells him a bottle of Bordeaux as a love potion. When Nemorino's rich uncle dies and the village girls suddenly swarm round him, he takes it as proof the elixir works. The opera's one serious moment — a tenor noticing a tear in Adina's eye — became one of the most famous arias ever written.
How to spot them
- ▸A Basque or Italian village; a quack doctor's cart, a bottle of cheap wine sold as a philtre, a swaggering sergeant and a secret legacy
- ▸Voices: Nemorino (tenor), Adina (soprano), Belcore (baritone), Dulcamara (bass buffo)
- ▸The romanza with a bassoon introduction and a harp, in which the hero reads a woman's feelings from a single tear
- ▸Clue patterns: Romani, Milan 1832, Scribe's Le philtre, Auber, written in a few weeks
Arias & moments — listen
"Quanto è bella, quanto è cara" (1832)
The hero's opening cavatina, watching from a distance a woman who can read and he cannot
"Udite, udite, o rustici" (1832)
The quack's patter entrance, selling a cure-all from the back of a cart
"Come Paride vezzoso" (1832)
A sergeant's preening proposal, comparing himself to Paris offering the apple
"Prendi, per me sei libero" (1832)
Adina buys back the enlistment papers and, finally, admits she loves him
Quick-fire facts
- •Music by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Felice Romani, in Italian; the title means 'The Elixir of Love'.
- •It premiered at the Teatro della Canobbiana, Milan, on 12 May 1832.
- •Donizetti wrote it in roughly six weeks — some accounts say a fortnight — after another composer's opera fell through.
- •Romani adapted Eugène Scribe's libretto Le philtre, which Auber had set the year before in Paris.
- •The 'elixir' is a bottle of cheap Bordeaux.
- •It was the most-performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848.
- •'Una furtiva lagrima' is a romanza in B flat minor whose introduction is given to the bassoon; Romani reportedly objected to including so melancholy a number in a comedy.
- •Enrico Caruso recorded the aria several times from 1902 onwards, and those discs did much to make it a universal tenor test-piece.
- •Nemorino never learns within the opera that his uncle has died and left him a fortune — only the audience and the village girls know.
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — L'elisir d'amore Composition history, the Scribe source and the premiere
- Gustav Kobbé, rev. the Earl of Harewood and Antony Peattie — The New Kobbé's Opera Book Synopsis and the placing of the musical numbers