The Elixir of Love, Donizetti’s Famous Comic Opera,
to be Staged by Oberlin Opera Theater November 15 — 19

Complimentary Media Tickets: 440-775-8328
Limited Seating Available for Weekend Performances
Call Oberlin College’s Central Ticket Service at 440-775-8169

OBERLIN, OHIO — The Elixir of Love (L’elisir d’amore), Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera about a humble young man’s belief in the power of love—and a little love potion—will be staged by Oberlin Opera Theater in November. The opera, with a libretto by Felice Romani, opens on Wednesday, November 15, at 8 p.m. in Oberlin College’s Hall Auditorium, located at 67 North Main Street on Route 58, between the Oberlin Inn and the Allen Memorial Art Museum. The two-act, four-scene opera will be sung in Italian with English supertitles. There will be one intermission.

Stage direction for The Elixir of Love is by Jonathon Field, Associate Professor of Opera Theater and Director of Opera Theater Productions at Oberlin. Musical direction is by Francis Graffeo, Executive Director of the Joy of Music School, and former General Director and Conductor of the Knoxville Opera.

Performances of The Elixir of Love are at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, November 15, 17, and 18, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, November 19. Tickets are $5 for all students; $8 for Oberlin College faculty, staff, alumni, parents, area educators, and seniors; and $12 for the general public. All seats are reserved. Tickets are $3 more when purchased at the door. Call Oberlin’s Central Ticket Service, located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium, at 440-775-8169. Box-office hours are noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and select Saturdays. Hall Auditorium is wheelchair accessible, free parking is available throughout the campus, and hearing enhancement is available upon request.

The Elixir of Love is sponsored by the Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s Opera Theater program through generous support from the Louis C. Sudler Fund. It is produced in cooperation with the Oberlin College Theater and Dance Program.

Synopsis
The young peasant Nemorino loves the beautiful and wealthy landowner Adina. As Nemorino swoons over Adina, however, it becomes painfully obvious how little she cares. She is much more interested in her book about Tristan and Isolde, the story of a love potion that makes people fall in love with one another. A drum is heard, and a patrol of soldiers enters, led by the blustering Sergeant Belcore. The Sergeant takes an interest in Adina, who reciprocates his feelings, telling Nemorino that she wants a real man, like Belcore.

Just as things are quieting down, Doctor Dulcamara, a traveling salesman of various drinks and tonics, enters with his trumpeter and cart full of potions. Nemorino approaches the Doctor, inquiring if he may have the Elixir of Queen Isolde. Dulcamara finds the elixir—which is actually a bottle of Bordeaux—and gives it to Nemorino, telling him he will see no effects until the following day (when the Doctor will be long gone). Nemorino downs the bottle, and is feeling its effects when Adina enters. She wonders why Nemorino is so happy, and why he is suddenly apathetic towards her. They are both distracted by Sergeant Belcore, who arrives to ask for Adina’s hand in marriage. She agrees to become his bride—in one week’s time. Nemorino only giggles in response, knowing that in a week Adina will be in love with him. But, when Belcore receives orders to embark on a new mission, Adina, trying to make Nemorino jealous, agrees to marry Belcore that night.

Later, at the wedding, a betrothal is to be signed, but Adina is upset. No sign of Nemorino. She runs out, not signing. Nemorino is busy searching for Dulcamara to buy more elixir. He has no money, so instead he joins Belcore’s army, in order to obtain 20 lire—enough to buy more elixir. As he runs off to find Dulcamara, the girls of the village enter with fascinating news: Nemorino’s uncle has died, making him very wealthy, and desirable. The girls begin to swoon over him, and Dulcamara tells Adina about the elixir. She is deeply moved, especially when she learns that Nemorino has sold his freedom for her. Seeing this as proof of his devotion to her, Adina buys back Nemorino’s enlistment contract and confesses her love for him. (Source: Grove Music Online)

Performers and Production Team
This production of The Elixir of Love features Oberlin Conservatory students double cast in the principal roles. The principals alternate performances, with one cast appearing Wednesday and Saturday, and the other Friday and Sunday.  The principal roles include Nemorino (Samuel Read Levine ‘07, Alek Shrader ‘07); Adina (Jennifer Jakob ‘07, Alexis Grenier ‘07); Dulcamara (Joseph Barron ‘08, Jason Eck ‘08); Belcore (Jeffrey Hill ‘08, Kevin Ray ‘07); and Giannetta (Stephanie Washington ‘07, Tiffany Marx ‘08).  The members of the chorus include Evan Bennett ‘08, Lillie Chilen ‘08, Kimiko Glynn ‘08, Chad Grossman ‘10, John Harper ‘08, Justin Manalad ‘08, Miranda McLean ‘09, Nathan Medley ‘09, Leigh Madeline Nelson ‘07, Jennifer Noel ‘07, Kendell Pinkney ‘10, Jordan Roberts ‘09, Elisabeth Shoup ‘08, Maureen Sutliff ‘08, Elias Traverse ‘08, Joseph Turro ‘09, Benji von Reiche ‘10, and Sophie Wingland ’08, portraying peasant men and women.

The Oberlin production team of professional staff and students includes Assistant Music Director of Opera Theater Alan Montgomery as Assistant Music Director, and Associate Professor of Theater Michael Louis Grube as Managing Director and Set Designer. Lisa Kelly is the stage manager. Technical direction is by Joe Natt; the assistant technical director is Andrew Kaetta. Costume design is by Associate Professor of Theater Chris Flaharty. Lighting design is by Jaime Benjamin. Associate Professor of Choral Conducting Hugh Floyd is Chorus Master. Vocal accompanying and opera coaching is by Howard Lubin and Daniel Michalek. Ensemble Librarian and Manager Chris Haff-Paluck is the orchestral librarian. Caitlin Maura Smith ‘07 is assistant stage manager.

Gaetano Donizetti (Composer, 1797-1848) was born in Bergamo, Italy, to a poor family that did not encourage musical achievement. At the age of 9 he was admitted as a scholarship student to the Lezioni Caritatevoli, a school founded by Simon Mayr, maestro di cappellaat the cathedral of S Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. At the school, Donizetti took classes in singing and keyboard, and later, with Mayr himself,  in composition and theory. It was with Mayr’s help that his career was launched. His first professional engagements—commissions by impresario Paolo Zanca—were confined to northern Italy and smaller theaters, but in 1821 his opera Zoraïda di Granata, for the Teatro Argentina in Rome, impressed Domenico Barbaja, the leading impresario of the time, and Donizetti was invited to compose for Naples. During this time he began to receive performances and commissions across a widening geographical area, but his reputation was established both nationally and internationally by the success of his 31st opera, Anna Bolena, which premiered in Milan in 1830. An immediate success, the opera opened the door to a productive eight-year period in which he composed 25 operas, including The Elixir of Love (L’elisir d’amore), which became Italy’s most frequently performed opera between 1838 and 1848. Shortly after The Elixir of Love, Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor, his best-known opera of the period. In 1838, Donizetti followed the paths of both Rossini and Bellini and moved to Paris, where he established himself with the productions of such operas as L’ange de Nisida, and accepted invitations for work in Rome, La Scala, and Bologna, among others. In 1842 Donizetti accepted the prestigious position of Hofkapellmeister to the Habsburg court in Vienna and court composer to the Austrian emperor. He spent his later years residing in both Paris and Vienna, always working on several new projects while supervising stagings of older compositions.  Donizetti is best known for his operatic works, but he also wrote music in a number of other forms, including church music, string quartets, and some orchestral works. (Source: Grove Music Online)

Francis Graffeo (Guest Conductor) enjoys a distinguished career as a conductor of opera, symphony, and ballet, leading performances with orchestras and theaters in the United States and abroad, among them the Fort Worth and Colorado symphony orchestras, Oregon Mozart Players, Atlanta Ballet, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Central City Opera, San Antonio Opera, Opera Colorado, AIMS Orchestra in Austria, Orquesta Filarmonica de Lima (Peru), the Orquesta Clasica de Guatemala, the Opera Theater of Lucca, Italy, Arizona Opera, Nashville Opera, the Symphony of the Mountains, and Opera Delaware. Graffeo is the creator of Knoxville’s popular Rossini Festival, which made its debut during his five-year tenure as General Director and Conductor of Knoxville Opera. Prior to his appointment in Knoxville he was Artistic Director and Conductor of Eugene Opera, and director of Opera at the University of Oregon. Graffeo also held positions with Opera Colorado, the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and at Central City Opera, where he was a member of the artistic team for 10 seasons. Graffeo has served as grants panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., and has judged numerous music competitions across the country. He was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he received the Faculty Award for Distinction in Performance; at Centro Linguistico Sperimentale in Florence, Italy; and at Texas Tech University, where he graduated magna cum laude. Graffeo is currently the Executive Director of the Joy of Music School, a non-profit school providing free instruments and music lessons to several hundred disadvantaged Knoxville area children.

Jonathon Field (Director) is one of America’s more versatile and popular stage directors, having directed more than 100 productions in all four corners of the United States. He served as Artistic Director of Lyric Opera Cleveland for six seasons, where he presented the operas of Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti as well as the Ohio premieres of works by John Adams, Mark Adamo, and Philip Glass. Field’s productions for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, among them Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief and The Spanish Hour, were so successful they were repeated at the Illinois Humanities Festival with Stephen Sondheim as keynote speaker. His productions of La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus for San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theatre played in more than 20 states, as has an updated version of La Bohème for Seattle Opera. In addition to the standard Italian and German repertoire, he also has worked in the Russian, directing Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov in the original Russian in San Francisco; he had a great critical success there as well with Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges. Over the past eight years Field has directed 10 productions with the Arizona Opera, being deemed by the press “their most perceptive stage director,” and working there with such esteemed artists as Teresa Zylis-Gara, Jerome Hines, Pablo Elvira, Giorgio Tozzi, and Angelina Reux.

Field’s versatility extends from the avant garde to musical comedies. He successfully introduced computer-generated scenery to the world of opera in a recent San Francisco production of Candide that the press called “virtual Voltaire—the backgrounds are as varied as the story.” His pioneering use of video-projected scenery in productions of The Turn of the Screw, Tales of Hoffmann, and Der Freischütz has elicited praise from audience and critics alike. In the realm of operetta and musicals he has staged H.M.S. Pinafore for Opera Omaha, Trial by Jury for Lake George Opera, Bernstein’s Wonderful Town in Chicago, and Merry Widow and Countess Maritza in San Francisco. For the Oakland Symphony he translated and choreographed Stravinsky’s Pulcinella using members of the Oakland Ballet. He has worked on several world premieres, most notably assisting Robert Altman with Bolcom’s McTeague at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and David Alden with Susa’s The Love of Don Perlimplin with San Francisco Opera. He has also worked as Assistant Director for several of Seattle Opera’s Wagner Ring cycles, and has served in an administrative capacity with many opera companies and festivals. In February 2007, Field will direct, at Oberlin and at Miller Theatre in New York City, the U.S. premiere of Lost Highway, the dramatic music theater work by noted Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth based on the David Lynch film.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and pronounced a “national treasure” by the Washington Post, its alumni have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music world. Numerous Oberlin alumni have attained stature as solo performers, composers, and conductors, among them Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis, Denyce Graves, Franco Farina, Lisa Saffer, George Walker, Christopher Rouse, David Zinman, and Robert Spano. All of the members of the contemporary music ensembles eighth blackbird and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) are Oberlin graduates, and members of the Miró, Pacifica, Juilliard, and Fry Street quartets, among others, include Oberlin alumni, who can also be found in major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.