FOUR STARS

Uncharacteristically crowd-pleasing opera has dominated the programme thus far at Opera Holland Park. It began with that favourite double bill of Cav and Pag and continued with Madama Butterfly. Something rather more unusual came third with Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, a musical treat under the baton of Matthew Waldren, though tending to confirm that this is hardly a work to compare with, say, Carmen. Essentially, it is a one-tune opera — the sublime duet for tenor (Jung Soo Yung) and baritone (Grant Doyle) ‘Au fond du temple saint’ — and that heard early on, leaving the rest of the evening feeling a bit of an anti-climax.

Now we are back to the core repertoire again, with Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, which lately has taken over from Don Pasquale as the composer’s most popular comic opera. Perfect for a summer’s night, the tale finds lovelorn Nemorino (tenor Aldo Di Toro) winning flighty farmer Adina (the excellent soprano Sarah Tynan, right) from swashbuckling military rival Belcore (an underpowered George von Bergen). He believes that the ingestion of a ‘love potion’ acquired from quack doctor Dulcamara (Geoffrey Dolton) has made him the cynosure of all female eyes. In fact the girls know — as he does not — that he has just come into his late uncle’s millions.

If the sunflower farm setting of Pia Furtado’s production (design Leslie Travers) is a shade drab, the same is not true of the music under conductor Stephen Higgins.

 

Opera Holland Park
Until August 3
Tickets: 0300 999 1000