David Lomel\u00ed<\/a> and others getting ready for the evening.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Then\u00a0Lomel\u00ed came onstage to welcome the audience in English and Spanish. All this delayed the opening downbeat by a quarter of an hour \u2014 five minutes would have been fine \u2014 and then the national anthem was belted out by loudly amplified soprano Haley Sicking. Worst of all was a jazz trio playing in the lobby during intermission. Give our ears and minds a break!<\/p>\n
As people were seating themselves, though, a video of rehearsal excerpts was an appealing warmup.<\/p>\n
A co-production with Santa Fe and Palm Beach opera companies, this Elixir was previously presented in Santa Fe in 2009 and 2024. Directed by Stephen Lawless, it updates the nominally 1830s rural Italian story to post-World War II times, with occupying American soldiers. Silly dance moves are thrown in here and there \u2014 well, why not?<\/p>\n
Designer Ashley Martin-Davis supplies a big billboard whose messages and images change as needed, plus rough-planked doors in angled walls and period costumes. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Star of the show vocally was Soraya Mafi, who gave the well-to-do but restless Adina a soprano of generous expressivity and dazzlingly precise runs. And she made what can be a caricature seem genuinely human.<\/p>\n
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Anthony Le\u00f3n was a delightfully boyish Nemorino, transformed from the usual peasant farmer into a grease-stained auto mechanic. (A bright red in-progress sportscar restoration was almost a dramatis persona itself.) Le\u00f3n had the bright Italianate tenor for the role, although I could imagine just a bit more poetry in the famous aria \u201cUna furtiva lagrima.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mihai Damian was the pompous, entitled Sergeant Belcore, with an aptly blustery baritone that could smooth over as needed. Kayla Nanto as Giannetta had a powerful if edgy mezzo, but she made the smaller role a real presence. Alessandro Corbelli had the seasoned baritone and comic instincts for the quack peddler Dr. Dulcamara, whose \u201celixir\u201d is claimed \u2014 among other things \u2014 to banish bedbugs, cure scrofula, restore youth and add amorous magnetism. But he didn\u2019t always keep up with the role\u2019s rapid-fire patter.<\/p>\n
Ensembles\u00a0large and small weren\u2019t always quite together, although subsequent performances will likely tighten. And while conductor Guillermo Garc\u00eda Calvo got alert, nicely inflected playing from the orchestra, at times it could have been a little softer for benefit of the singers. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Details<\/p>\n
Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Oct. 17 at Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St. $15 to $475. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L to R, Mihai Damian as Belcore, Anthony Le\u00f3n (background) as Nemorino and Soraya Mafi as Adina in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,95191,93542,87998,157857],"class_list":["post-462263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-classical-music","tag-tp-performing-arts","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tp-dallas-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}