`The Elixir of Love' is potent and enchanting

Much of the updating works brilliantly, through comic ideas large and small, many of which recur with variations throughout the evening.

The scenery is dominated by a giant upstage billboard with advertisements that change to reflect major plot developments throughout the evening. Vehicles play a big role, with Belcore arriving via army jeep, the priest called in to marry Adina and Belcore entering on a motor scooter, and Nemorino rebuilding a bright red sports car — a metaphor for the developing relationship between him and Adina.

A simple chalkboard gets a workout, too. It’s first used by Adina as she teaches the villagers how to read. With a few erasures and additions, Nemorino turns natura into the grade-school equation “N + A = [heart outline]” as part of his campaign to win Adina’s heart. At the Act II wedding banquet, the chalkboard reappears as the menu, which starts with Insalata di Pollo and finally ends with Gelato di Pollo, after several intermediate chicken courses.

There’s too much smaller-scale comic business, however. Some is funny but has no genuine connection to plot or character, and some just isn’t very funny and slows things down. The shtick profusion seemed strangely at odds with Lawless’ statement his staging concept sprang from discovering that the opera wasn’t billed as a comic opera (opera buffa) but as a music-drama with comedy (melodrama).

The vocal standout of the evening was Chilean Yaritza Véliz, in her company debut as Adina. This is no old-time light-voiced soubrette at work but someone with a gleaming, lyric soprano voice who has exceptional facility in florid music and a variety of vocal colorations from which to draw.

I was less convinced by her acting; despite her energetic stage presence, she often seemed to play at the character rather than inhabit it, with lots of hair-tossing and megawatt smiles. Her most emotionally convincing moments took place in the duet late in Act II, in which she and Nemorino finally declare their mutual love.

In the latter role, Jonah Hoskins displayed many of the same vocal qualities, with a lyric tenor of healthy size that’s evenly produced throughout its range, with a command of coloratura. He’s also an animated performer, a definite plus in a staging that needs a Nemorino who’s fleet of foot.

Hoskins and conductor Roberto Kalb found the tricky balance in Nemorino’s famous aria Una furtiva lagrima, which is too-often sung as if it were a dirge. They successfully conveyed much of Nemorino’s suppressed wonder and excitement as he realizes that Adina genuinely loves him through a well-chosen tempo; what was missing was subtlety of dynamics, with too many vocal fortes and fortissimos.

As Belcore, the American army officer who conducts a whirlwind courtship of Adina, former apprentice Luke Sutliff took an effectively understated approach to the role. By letting the bluster that’s built into the text and the music work without compounding it too much in his performance, his Belcore became someone whom Adina might genuinely consider marrying, giving the storyline a heightened sense of urgency.

Baritone Alfredo Daza fared much better as Dulcamara than as the replacement Germont in the season-opening La Traviata. Here, he’s a paranoid conman on the run from two determined but ineffectual agenti di polizia, with the slightest unexpected noise causing him to put up his hands for an arrest.

Daza’s is a dark-hued Dulcamara, to be sure, but one who works well within the high-energy production for his presence here to make sense.

Lawless gave the village lass Giannetta more to do than in most stagings, especially in the realm of comic business, and second-year apprentice Cadie J. Bryan made the most of the opportunity. Her character gave the sense of being a fully rounded personality who was always alert to whatever was happening onstage, and she sang very well in her biggest opportunity, the scene in which she tells the other young women of the village about Nemorino’s surprise inheritance.

Kudos also to Christopher Bergen and his Opera Titles team. The refreshingly colloquial text offered on the seat-back screens reflected the time and place of the action, functioning as a successful adaptation of the libretto, rather than an anachronistic condensation of it.