It's autumn, and the opera season starts again

Nemorino pleads with the doctor for the love-potion

We were back at Glyndebourne the other evening for the opening night of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore".  One of the better-kept secrets is the Glyndebourne Touring Company's few weeks in October and November, where you can see a terrific production from the comfort of the stalls for two thirds of the price of a seat up in the gods during the summer.  Ok, you don't have the glitz of black tie and silver service picnics, but I'm happy to settle for a seat where I can see things close up.

Adina dances with the philandering soldier

And this production was worth every penny.  The plot is slight - village dolt adores capricious girl who rejects him; he purchases fake elixir from quack, persuaded this will change her mind; his uncle dies and leaves him rich; village girls pursue him, at which point capricious girl thinks she needs to get in ahead of the competition; happy ending.  The music, however, is divine.  The two leads, sung by Christopher Tiesi, making his Glyndebourne début, and Joélle Harvey, were entirely convincing.  (Nemorino, said village dolt, is thick as two short planks but then, as the person in the seat next to mine at another performance said "He is a tenor", so you can forgive him anything.)

Nemorino pleads with Adina

 There was a lot of stage business, and the cast were obviously enjoying themselves.  So did we.

If Glyndebourne comes and goes, alas, we nonetheless have the Met Opera live transmissions to occupy us in the interim.  Last Saturday we went along to Hastings Odeon and saw the divine Anna Netrebko play Tatiana in Eugene Onegin.  It was the first opera I ever saw, around forty years ago, and I still love every minute of it.  On this occasion Piotr Beczala put in a wonderful performance as Lenski, and I was moved to tears by his aria before the duel.  There's nothing like a good weep to make you feel good.

Hastings Odeon's live transmissions can be a bit capricious, like Adina in Elisir.  There was a famous occasion last year when the subtitles were in Russian throughout the first act.  This time they started off in German, and I shot outside to tell the youthful assistant.  They managed to get them into English, but we had unfortunately lost the initial dialogue, where the whole theme of the opera is outlined by Tatiana's mother, telling of her own experience of love and marriage (basically, they don't go together).  But we got on the rails after that, and the wonders of the plot unrolled with all the sumptuous dignity of a Greek tragedy.

Antony Mair

Nemorino and the doctor's assistant