L’elisir d’amore, Metropolitan Opera, New York — ‘The crowd went wild for Vittorio Grigolo’

Thank goodness, literally, for Vittorio Grigolo. Almost single-voicedly, the lively Italian tenor brought distinction to an otherwise drab L’elisir d’amore on Thursday.

The Met, not incidentally, yawned with empty seats. That seems to be the norm these days. Still, the sparse crowd went wild after Grigolo glorified the opera’s greatest hit, “Una furtiva lagrima”. For a long stretch the prospect of a rare encore loomed, yet our hero eventually extinguished that flame himself. Modesty triumphed over ego.

Grigolo sang urgently, making Nemorino, the loveable lovesick bumpkin, a poignant protagonist, moving with boyish impetuosity, acting with athletic ardour and singing tirelessly with equal parts bravado and finesse. He dealt in revelations, all alone.

Aleksandra Kurzak, inheriting Adina’s leggy affectations from Anna Netrebko — also her macho top hat and manly jacket — sang stridently under pressure, floated some lovely diminuendos, and mugged mercilessly. Adam Plachetka reduced Sergeant Belcore to a burly baritonal boor, vocally and histrionically. As Dulcamara the phoney-potion peddler, Alessandro Corbelli won points by avoiding buffo banality but lost them by remaining oddly impassive. Ying Fang, the cutesy soubrette Giannetta, made one wish her secondary duties could have been primary.

Enrique Mazzola, savouring his debut in the pit, did his considerable best to enforce high spirits despite depressing inequities. At least the fine Met orchestra gave him what he obviously wanted.

Bartlett Sher’s surprisingly bland staging-scheme, new in 2012 and now entrusted to Louisa Muller, stresses pretty-pretty platitudes at every laborious turn. Significantly, perhaps, the Broadway-oriented director moves the action — also inaction — to 1836, the historic time of rising political independence in Italy. Unfortunately, the motivation stays fuzzy.

Framed within a false proscenium in a vain attempt to suggest intimacy, Michael Yeargan’s storybook canvases support easy scene-changes but evoke miserly charm. Catherine Zuber, the costume designer, dresses the choral peasants incongruously in elegant duds. She also provides Belcore’s silly soldiers with helmets that resemble footstools. Such liberties may mean something. Still, we can’t be sure.

metopera.org