Step right up! Get your 'Elixir'

Snake-oil salesman meets Donizetti in Opera Colorado's update of comic favorite

Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 9, 2007 at midnight

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Jim Robinson has heard the complaints before, and he's clearly irked.

"There's a misconception out there," Opera Colorado's artistic director suggested. "Some people think we sit down and ask, 'How can we mess around with this opera?' But that's just not the case.

"I'd be happy to leave an opera alone. But we're not going to succumb to the stupidity of literalness."

Translation: The company's production of L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love) will be moved a century forward to the early 1900s and shifted from a Basque village to an American small town for one simple reason: It works.

"We want to illuminate relationships, and I think the (new) setting helps the story," Robinson explained of his updating of Donizetti's popular comic favorite, opening tonight at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

This staging marks the first time an Opera Colorado production co-presented with other companies will debut in Denver. Seven other U.S. companies are on board to help share the costs and eventually stage Elixir.

Robinson and his stage designer, Allen Moyer, understood that this production would enjoy a long shelf life. Despite the scope of the project, they began planning as they always do: by casually tossing ideas back and forth, as they did with last season's reworking of Mozart's Abduction From the Seraglio, set on the Orient Express.

Central in their thoughts was the need to retain the sweet naveté of Elixir's story built around a simple man's quest for unattainable love.

"We wanted to preserve the innocent time period (of Donizetti's early-19th century Italian village)," Robinson noted. "I started thinking about the 1930s, but it was kind of a dry time. I didn't want this to look like The Grapes of Wrath. So we kept moving it back. The '20s had too much flash. But when we got to the 'teens, it made sense.

"It seemed right to us that the Midwest of 1910 could capture that small-town atmosphere. Allen and I understood that it's easy for this story to be reduced to absolute silliness, which we didn't want."

As with any operatic recasting, once a time and a place were decided, the director and the designer had to pore over the libretto and make sure the updating fit. Surprisingly, that process was a breeze, Robinson said.

"It all fit very easily and very fast. What we did is not all that radical."

Moyer created a set design dominated by a turn-of-the-century gazebo. Robinson meanwhile transplanted the four characters to 20th century America. Here's how:

• Nemorino - Originally depicted as a bumpkin with a lot of free time, this sympathetic character here becomes the town's ice-cream salesman (cast members will be eating real ice cream served from his Ford Model T truck, we're told). "He couldn't just be a simple idler," the director said. "Nemorino needed a specific place in the communiRty, to be someone everyone knew. In his job, he observes a lot. He is hard at work while everyone else is playing."

• Adina - The love interest is usually portrayed as a flamboyant flirt, at first amused by Nemorino's affection, then offended when his consumption of the elixir (actually, wine) turns him into a swaggering, staggering suitor. Here, Robinson's conception of a softer, more sympathetic character was fleshed out with help from the soprano singing the role, Maria Kanyova.

"Maria told me, 'I don't want Adina to be the bitch she always is.' And that makes sense. She's fond of Nemorino, but she does wonder if she can find someone better. She sees him as being stuck in his job and wants to motivate him to be something better."

• Belcore - This obnoxious character is a soldier and recruiting officer from a nearby village. No change was necessary. "A recruiting officer would make a strong impression in a small American town," Robinson observed. Naturally, the uniform will reflect World War I-era styles.

• Dr. Dulcamara - Some human weaknesses remain timeless: gullibility, for instance. The traveling seller of magic potions in Donizetti's opera is here transformed into a snake-oil salesman, arriving via motorcycle, with his sidekick in the sidecar. Robinson shrugged off a question about a motorcycle's limited storage for the doctor's collection of questionable healing concoctions. "He really sells only one product - but with different names," he said. "Besides, the motorcycle makes him more mobile." Indeed, a con artist often needs to execute a quick getaway.

Elixir of Love

• When and where: Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 7:30 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Feb. 16, 2:30 p.m. Feb. 18

• Cost: $27 to $157

• Information: 303-357-2787, operacolorado.org

Reinventing the wheels

In opera, the singers are always the stars. Well, almost always. After a pair of trains threatened to steal the show in recent Opera Colorado stagings, cast members at this weekend's opening of Elixir of Love face the prospect of being upstaged by a vintage Model T ice cream truck and an ancient Enfield motorcycle. The steps to get these props rolling:

1 Turn to an expert

Ravenswood Studio in Chicago, specialists in building unusual sets and set pieces for opera and theater, previously built a life-size locomotive engine for Opera Colorado's staging of Puccini's La Boheme (2004) and a rolling Orient Express train car for Mozart's Abduction From the Seraglio (2006). "They love this sort of challenge," said Opera Colorado's production and technical director, Rupert Hemmings.

2 Tell them what you want

Opera Colorado designer Allen Moyer knew specifically which vehicle he wanted. Ravenswood project manager Eric Cup said Moyer not only showed them pictures of a 1926 ice-cream truck but provided blueprints for the box that would be placed on the truck bed.

3 Find the right truck

Cup quickly tracked down a rusty but ready 1916 Ford at Model T Haven in Iola, Kan. "They had a bunch of them there," he said. The price: $4,000.

4 Retrofit the truck

Knowing that this could be a pricey project, Cup toyed with the idea of buying a truck that had already been restored. But the base cost could be $14,000 - plus another $15,000 for retooling the truck for its role on stage. Instead, Ravenswood produced Nemorino's ice-cream truck with an electric motor. They spent more than $3,000 in parts, acquired from numerous sources, mostly in Ohio, and spent more than six weeks getting the truck ready for the stage. The total cost: $24,000.

5 Add a motorcycle

The second major prop for this production - a motorcycle with a sidecar transporting the elixir salesman Dr. Dulcamara - was acquired in Denver, at a cost of $4,000 (all costs to be shared by the production's co-presenters). Opera Colorado outfitted it with an electric motor and painted it red, white and green.

• Visit RockyMountainNews.com/drmn/spotlight for a slide show of the Model T's conversion.

A guide to the potion

• Plot: Nemorino is a simple fellow in love with Adina, a complicated woman. She mocks him, defiantly dismissing his devotion by submitting to the flirtations of the self-absorbed military man, Belcore. Adding a twist to this triangle is the noisy arrival of Dr. Dulcamara, a traveling vendor of dubious herbs and spirits, who happily dispenses to Nemorino a potion guaranteed to make Adina his (it's really just wine, but don't tell Nemorino!). Naturally, this elixir of love won't take effect for 24 hours - giving the doctor time to get away. The plot thickens, and then thickens some more. But all ends happily for Nemorino and his beloved Adina.

• Big moments: The entrance of Dr. Dulcamara in his crazy, overdecorated carriage (here, a vintage motorcycle with sidecar) is a perennial hit with audiences. Vocally, the opera contains one big number, Nemorino's unforgettable Una furtiva lagrima (A Furtive Tear), in which he reacts to a subtle show of emotion by Adina.

• On DVD: A recent release on Virgin Classics stars two of opera's most exciting new voices: the charming Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón and the ravishing Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. This is a standard version, featuring happy peasants as envisioned by Donizetti. But it's worth the price to watch Villazón juggle three apples - and to watch Netrebko, period. The singing isn't bad, either.

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