My Notes:If you love Opera, come learn with me. I have posted two videos of Donizetti' opera(L'Elisir D'Amore). The second one has the subtitles for those us who don't speak Italian. Enjoy.
Bio taken from Wikipedia/
L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love) is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's Le philtre (1831).
Written in haste,[1] L'elisir d'amore was the most often performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848[2] and has remained continually in the international opera repertory. Today it is one of the most frequently performed of all Donizetti's operas: it appears as number 12 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide. There are a large number of recordings. It contains the popular tenor aria "Una furtiva lagrima," a romanza that has a considerable performance history in the concert hall.
Donizetti insisted on a number of changes from the original Scribe libretto. The most well known of these was the insertion of "Una furtiva lagrima", others are the duet between Adina and Nemorino in the first act, "Chiedi all'aura lusinghiera", and the rewritten lyrics to "Io son ricco e tu sei bella" in the final scene of the opera, where this duet, originally a song written by Dulcamara for the marriage of Adina and Belcore, reoccurs as a Dulcamara solo with scabrous lyrics, becoming the de facto final aria—a feature of many Donizetti operas.
In general, under Donizetti's hands, the subject became more romantic than in the Auber version: L'elisir d'amore features three big duets between the tenor and soprano. There is also personal history in the this opera. Donizetti's military service was bought by a rich woman, so that, unlike his brother Giuseppe (also a well known composer) he did not have to serve in the Austrian army.
The meaning of Elixir
Elixir is a clear, sweet-flavored liquid used for medicinal purposes, to be taken orally and intended to cure one's ills
L'Elisir d'Amore - Anna Netrebko - Matthew Pólenzani
L'ELISIR D'AMORE - GAETANO DONIZETTI – 2005
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