Falling in love again Winnipeg soprano revisits romantic role she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 5:11 PM CDT Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024

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This article was published 23/10/2024 (656 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Adina, the strong-willed female lead of Donizetti’s comedic opera The Elixir of Love, is a formative role for Winnipeg soprano Andriana Chuchman, who has sung it on stages all over North America.

It was also the role in which she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2014 — an auspicious moment in an opera singer’s career.

“Adina’s been with me for a long time,” Chuchman says affectionately.

Now, Chuchman will be performing Adina for hometown audiences for the first time, in Manitoba Opera’s upcoming production of The Elixir of Love, which runs Oct. 26, 30 and Nov. 1 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Chuchman actually made her stage debut in this opera — as Giannetta, Adina’s friend — when Manitoba Opera last mounted it back in 2005. She’s performed on Winnipeg stages many times in the intervening years, “but this is a return to this opera and in the leading role, so it’s really special,” she says.

Composed by Gaetano Donizetti with libretto by Felice Romani, The Elixir of Love is a two-act comedy about Adina, a proud, beautiful, successful young woman, and Nemorino (sung in this production by American tenor Jonah Hoskins), the poor villager who is desperately, miserably in love with her.

So, Nemorino pays a visit to Dr. Dulcamara (Canadian baritone Peter McGillivray) for a love potion he can drink to help him up his game, in modern parlance. (Winnipeg-based soprano Karen Santos as Giannetta and American baritone Jorell Williams as Sgt. Belcore round out the principal cast.)

There’s a timelessness about this nearly 200-year-old rom-com — or a melodramma giocoso, if you want to get technical — says Winnipeg director Ann Hodges.

“We still find the same things funny. It’s really about humanity and the stupid things we do when we’re in love or when we’re jealous or when we’re greedy,” she says.

(A small but very Winnipeg aside: Hodges, coincidentally, was in the audience for Chuchman’s Met debut. The director was in New York for a workshop and happened upon a Facebook post saying that Chuchman would be stepping in for an ill Anna Netrebko. “Andriana is phenomenal,” Hodges says. “Her acting abilities and her vocal quality are just phenomenal.”)

This production is also set in the 1950s, giving it a slightly more modern update. But the pastoral Italian village set, on loan from New Orleans Opera, still works.

“Italy doesn’t change,” Chuchman says. “There’s new stores and things like that. But a small village, a piazza, where there’s a café and some shops? It looks the same as it did when it was built.”

What has changed for Chuchman, however, is Adina.

“She’s evolved a lot for me, because my voice has changed in the last 20 years,” she says. “You know, from being a young singer to having a more mature sound — and I’ve had a child since, and so that changes your voice and mechanism and body and mind. It changes a lot of things.”

Still, singing Adina is, in a lot of ways, like coming home.

“It’s one thing to have a role debut, to learn a role from scratch, and to sing it. There’s always a little bit of uncertainty about how the voice will react to certain things — under nerves, under whatever sort of circumstances,” Chuchman says.

“As Adina, for me, it’s so immediate. It’s so right there. I don’t have to think. I think I opened my score maybe a couple of days before rehearsal started.”

As with any good rom-com, a lot of the opera’s success rides on the chemistry between Adina and Nemorino.

“You have to know that they’re into each other, even though she’s so proud she won’t admit it, and he’s just honest and earnest — and the chemistry is fantastic between the two of them,” Hodges says of the two leads.

“They’re both really what I call physical actors — they’re really athletic, and they just feel like real human beings up there.”

Indeed, The Elixir of Love is not what Hodges calls a “stand-and-deliver” opera.

“Comedy is always harder than drama — always,” Chuchman says. “There’s way less stillness. There’s a lot of things going on, a lot of props, a lot of elements to worry about, not just singing and worrying about yourself.

“I think in this, the physicality feels fairly natural to me. It’s not like it’s slapstick — it’s very natural — so it’s really just, for me, playing in the moment.”

For the audience, Donizetti’s much-loved love story is on the more accessible end.

“It’s actually my favourite opera, because there’s no fat,” Hodges says. “There are no times when you’re going, ‘Oh, come on, move it along.’ It just zips along. If someone has never been to the opera before, this is a fantastic introduction.

“And the music is astonishing. It’s so beautiful. I describe it sometimes as watching Olympic athletes, because they have to have the ability to sing long fluid lines, but then there’s other times when it’s just like tripping over a thousand notes in a few seconds. It’s just very fluid and that’s not easy to do. So when you’re watching them do it, you’re in awe.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com