Though firmly established as a theatre director – he is an Associate Artist of the RSC whose production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show has been touring for nearly 20 years – Christopher Luscombe staged his first opera as recently as 2019. That was Falstaff at the Grange Festival, transposed to modern-day Windsor and brilliantly precise in its social observation. At Garsington two years ago he matched art deco spectacle with flesh-and-blood characterisations in Il barbiere di Siviglia. For L’elisir d’amore, the 2025 season-opener on the Wormsley Estate, he opts to shift the action to the late 1940s.
Simon Higlett’s set, executed in meticulous detail and lit by Mark Jonathan, is a picture-postcard piazza in an Italian village. It accommodates an idealised, carefree vision of the immediate post-war years. Belcore is a swaggering G.I. who wears flashy cowboy boots with his uniform and woos the local ragazze with bars of American chocolate, while Dulcamara – higher up the social scale than usual – becomes a dapper spiv who makes his entry and exit in a red roadster and peddles his wares with the aid of a glamorous blonde companion. Under the guidance of movement director Rebecca Howell, the young members of the Garsington chorus dance with West End pzazz and happily refrain from the kind of frantic semaphoring that can pass for Italian body language on Britain’s operatic stages. In the final scene, when Adina and Nemorino are finally united, a moment of cinematic fantasy ensues, taking the action to a different plane.
It is all enormous fun, and immaculately crafted and realised, though perhaps some simple sentiment and homespun charm goes missing. Still, the humour never becomes spiteful (a danger in this piece) and it is good to see Nemorino portrayed as an energetic, if frustrated, young man, not as a wimpy yokel. Oleksiy Palchykov’s athletic physical performance – he does a lot of leaping about – is reflected in firm-toned singing of a certain muscularity. At first, in the live acoustic of Garsington’s 600-seat opera pavilion, he sounds more like Manrico in Il trovatore, but there is no shortage of legato, sensitivity and refinement in ‘Una furtiva lagrima’, which duly stopped the show in Act 2. In a similar vein, Madison Leonard is not the pert minx of comic-opera tradition, but a confident, purposeful and witty young woman who becomes aware of the need to follow her heart. Her full-bodied, slightly grainy tone is always modulated with poise and elegance. Carles Pachon as the moustachioed Belcore towers over her and sings powerfully, though his fundamental timbre is more lyrical and yielding than macho. Richard Burkhard, Bartolo in Garsington’s 2023 Barbiere and a master of buffo roles and their associated patter, brings panache and a touch of class to dodgy Dulcamara. Giannetta, who here runs the strategically placed village caffè, has her finger well on the pulse of local life. Charlotte Jane Kennedy, recently a silky-voiced Susanna at the Royal College of Music, keeps the ladies of the chorus – and the audience – spellbound in the scene where she ‘discreetly’ spills the bins on Nemorino’s inheritance. The Philharmonia Orchestra plays with brio and grace and, even if there are moments when lyrical lines could be caressed with greater bel canto affection, the elixir of life flows through Chloe Rooke’s spruce, sparkling interpretation of the score.
Yehuda Shapiro
L’elisir d’amore
Music composed by Gaetano Donizetti
Libretto by Felice Romani
Cast and production staff:
Madison Leonard – Adina; Oleksiy Palchykov – Nemorino; Carles Pachon – Belcore; Richard Burkhard – Dulcamara; Charlotte Jane Kennedy – Giannetta
Director – Christopher Luscombe; Design – Simon Higlett; Lighting – Mark Jonathan; Movement –Rebecca Howell; Conductor – Chloe Rooke; Philharmonia Orchestra; Garsington Opera Chorus
Garsington Opera, Wormsley Estate, Buckinghamshire, 7 June 2025
Top image: Scene from L’elisir d’amore (Photo © Julian Guidera)