Ópera de Tenerife’s coproduction L’elisir d’amore by Donizetti, is reaching Italian Teatro Comunale di Bologna next week. This is a transnational project that is supported by the European Commission’s prestigious grant Creative Europe. Auditorio de Tenerife, which is under the Department of Education, Youth, Museums, Culture and Sport of the Cabildo de Tenerife, run by councillor Concepción Rivero, is the leading theatre of the project in partnership with Teatro Comunale di Bologna and Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre in Georgia.

The performances at the Italian theatre were originally scheduled for June but had to be put off due to the health crisis. They are now taking place on 29 and 30 September and 1, 3, 6 and 7 October, and are the first opera performances of this institution after the pandemic. L’elisir d’amore opened at Auditorio de Tenerife’s Sala Sinfónica with Pablo Maritano as stage director on 24 to 27 October 2019 and was on at Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre on 26, 27 and 29 February and 1 March 2020.

The cast was selected in auditions held by the Opera (e)Studio high specialisation academy in February 2019 in Bologna, Tbilisi, Madrid and Tenerife, which were attended by 181 candidates from 33 different nationalities. The singers who took part in the original performance were María Rita Combattelli (soprano); Beatriz de Sousa (soprano); Klodjan Kaçani (tenor); César Arrieta (tenor); Alberto Bonifazio (baritone); Jacobo Ochoa (baritone); Givi Gigineishvili (bass); Matteo Andrea Mollica (bass); Sofía Esparza (soprano) and Leonora Tess (soprano). The Italian cast also includes singers David Astorga, Alberto Bonifazio and Givi Gigineishvili.

The project as a whole, which includes the coproduction, the tour, the auditions, the training and several other activities, is what the European Commission’s Creative Europe has singled out from the hundreds of projects received. The goal of this European programme is to support the cultural and film industries of the continent.

Opera (e)Studio is Ópera de Tenerife’s high specialisation academy for artists and has had Giulio Zappa as artistic director since 2012. This project was set up with the aim of providing training to young artists in all the opera disciplines while at the same time meeting the demands of the present work market.

L’elisir d’amore is a melodramma giocoso by Gaetano Donizetti and libretto by Felice Romani, based on Eugène Scribe’s text Le philtre for the opera by Daniel François Esprit Auber. It is one of the composer’s best-received opera buffa thanks to unforgettable melodies like ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ and a lively plot that tells us about the love affair between beautiful Adina and naïve Nemorino. It was premiered at Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan on 12 May 1832.