Tenor Charles Vincenti’s debut at this year’s BOV Opera Festival started off on a high note on Monday as his heartfelt rendition in the main role of Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore won the hearts of the audience that packed the Manoel Theatre for the first night of this performance. L’Elisir d’Amore will be concluding this year’s eighth edition of the BOV Opera Festival with its second and last staging today Wednesday.

The production was once again the annual collaboration with Operalaboratorio from Palermo with the Manoel Theatre and, as in previous years, the performance was under the artistic direction of Elizabeth Smith.

Charles Vincenti performed the popular Nemorino role alongside a small group of other well-established soloists from Palermo’s Operalaboratorio – Caterina Ilardo in the role of Adina, Marco Filippo Romano as Dulcamara, Giovanni Bellavia as Belcore and Claudia Munda in the role of Giannetta.

L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love) is an Italian comic opera in two acts penned by Gaetano Donizetti based on an Italian libretto written by Felice Romani after Eugène Scribe’s libretto for Daniel-François-Esprit Auber’s Le Philtre (1831). The opera was premiered at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan on 12 May 1832 and is considered one of the most frequently performed of all Donizetti’s operas.

Some of its most noted arias include Quanto è bella (How beautiful she is) by Nemorino, Come Paride (Just as the charming Paris sung by Belcore, Udite, udite o rustici (Listen, listen, oh peasants) sung by Dulcamara and, perhaps the most noted of all, Una furtiva lagrima (A furtive tear sung by Nemorino.

Set in a small Italian village, L’Elisir d’Amore is about Nemorino, a poor peasant who is in love with Adina, a beautiful landowner who is indifferent to Nemorino’s feelings for her. Nemorino is convinced that only a magic potion will gain Adina’s love for him, since he is afraid she loves the self-important Sergeant Belcore. Dulcamara. A travelling quack salesman sells a magic potion to Nemorino but, unknown to him, the bottle contains only wine. The plot develops in a whole array of comical misunderstandings until both protagonists end up falling for each other.