Love tonic

The happy, gay charm of Gaetano Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore ('the elixir of love") delighted patrons at Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this past Thursday night with Washington National Opera's new production of the popular bel canto opera.

The beautiful, petite soprano Elizabeth Futral was breathtaking as Adina, handling her coloratura melismas with dexterity and finesse. Equally impressive was tenor Paul Groves, who sang Nemorino. His wide, open face made his good-hearted character believable and endearing, and his solo singing was generally top-notch; in fact, the only bravos to interrupt the performance were his after his emotional rendering of "Una furtiva lagrima" in the second act. Not all was perfect, though, especially in a duet between Futral and Groves near the end of the first act when their a capella section went flat and was terribly out of tune with the returning orchestra.

Sergeant Belcore was sung by French baritone Marc Barrard, making his WNO debut. Barrard had a strong voice, but this was not the ideal role for him; his vibrato was so wide it obscured the coloratura passages in some of his more famous arias, especially "Come Paride vezzoso". Some of his acting seemed rather stiff and stilted, but that may have been more the fault of stage director Stephen Lawless, who created a rather undistinguished and repetitive staging, especially for the massed chorus scenes.

We were particularly pleased to see our friend baritone Steven Condy, with whom we sang the world premiere of Ochelata's Wedding back in 2000, in the buffo role of Dr. Dulcamara, where he acquitted himself admirably. His "snake oil"-selling character was always accompanied on stage by a midget (what is the politically correct term these days?) character actor serving as his assistant.

Emmanuel Villaume conducted the Washington National Opera Orchestra, keeping them and the Washington National Opera Chorus together most of the time.

The farm storage building set for the production looked very impressive, with very realistic three-dimensional brickwork, which had been designed by Johan Engels. Joan Sullivan-Genthe's lighting design was interesting, though perhaps less than ideal, as it relied much of the time on great washes of yellow light from the large arched doors in the set, and could have used more proscenium lighting.

L'Elisir d'Amore is a light, comic opera delightfully done by Washington National Opera. It runs in repertory with Das Rheingold through April 17, and is well worth a look-see.