"Perhaps Gaetano Donizetti did not take as little as fifteen days to compose L’elisir d’amore, as he is said to have done, but he certainly didn’t have very much time: the opera was commissioned to him in a hurry after another composer had given up. The work was staged for the first time on 12th May 1832 and met with enormous success. It ran for as many as thirty-two performances. Some have defined L’Elisir as “Donizetti’s Barbiere”, and indeed what impressed the audiences was its successful blend of comic and lyrical elements, of fun and feeling. Nemorino, in love with Adina, is not only a simpleton who believes in the power of a potion to arouse love, he is also a man capable of expressing his feelings on the wings of such touching and serious notes as those of “Una furtiva lagrima”. Adina too is more than the usual whimsical girl of comic opera: in the end she lets her tenderness and feelings soar in the splendid “Prendi, per me sei libero”.

In a period where television was still to come, Dulcamara seems the prototype of many of today’s small screen touts; in 1951, in the movie Bellissima, Luchino Visconti used as sound track a few themes from Elisir, and with great irony gave that of Dulcamara to the charlatan director who tricks Magnani.

This digital-only CD features the recording of the 2007 Teatro Donizetti of Bergamo performance."