Let’s get one thing out of the way. If your idea of opera is a man in a horned helmet singing for four hours about doom, this is not that opera. (Save the Wagner for March, when The Dallas Opera brings in Lohengrin.)
This one is about a lovesick small-town mechanic, a schoolteacher who is a little too smart for him, a swaggering American soldier, a con man peddling fake medicine, and a bottle of cheap red wine that half the village believes is a magic love potion. Nobody dies onstage. Somebody gets tipsy. Everybody goes home happy. If it were a movie, it would star Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and you’d stop to watch it every time it came on cable.
The Dallas Opera opens its 69th season with Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love on Friday, October 9, at the Winspear Opera House. It premiered in 1832, and it has been one of the most popular comic operas in the world ever since. If you’ve always wanted to try opera but worried you’d spend the night checking your watch, start here.
Here’s the story, minus the Italian.
Nemorino is a sweet, earnest guy who is hopelessly in love with Adina. She is clever and confident and knows full well that Nemorino would walk into traffic for her. She likes him fine. She just isn’t about to admit it. One afternoon she reads the townspeople the old legend of Tristan and Isolde, two lovers bound together forever by a magic potion. Nemorino listens and has the same thought every hopeless romantic has had since the beginning of time: where do I get some of that?
Enter the competition. Belcore rolls into town with his unit and an ego the size of the town square, and he proposes to Adina practically before he’s unpacked. It’s the operatic version of a guy in a convertible pulling up while you’re still working up the nerve to ask her to the dance.
Then comes the real scene-stealer. Doctor Dulcamara is a traveling salesman whose miracle tonic cures everything from toothaches to wrinkles. He is a fraud, and a magnificent one. When Nemorino asks whether he happens to stock the elixir of Queen Isolde, Dulcamara doesn’t blink. Of course he does. He hands over a bottle of ordinary Bordeaux, pockets the kid’s last coin and promises it’ll work within a day, which is just enough time for the good doctor to get out of town.
From there, it’s a comedy of errors. Nemorino drinks the “potion,” loosens up and suddenly acts too cool to care about Adina, which drives her up the wall. To get back at him, she agrees to marry Belcore that very day. Broke and desperate for a second bottle, Nemorino enlists in Belcore’s outfit for the cash. Meanwhile, word spreads that Nemorino’s rich uncle has died and left him a fortune. Nemorino has no idea. Every young woman in the village does. When they all start crowding around him, he figures the elixir has finally kicked in.
You can probably guess how it ends. The fun is in getting there.
Even if you’ve never set foot in an opera house, you may know one piece of music from this show. In the second act, Nemorino spots a single tear in Adina’s eye and realizes she loves him after all. He sings about it in “Una furtiva lagrima,” one of the most famous tenor arias ever written. Caruso recorded it. Pavarotti made it his own. Your grandmother may have the album. It’s the moment the laughing stops, the whole house goes quiet and grown men suddenly find their programs very interesting.
This production, new to Dallas, comes from the Santa Fe Opera, where it premiered in 2024. Director Stephen Lawless drew on the Italian films of the 1940s and ’50s and set the story just after World War II. Nemorino becomes a car mechanic, Adina is the town schoolteacher, and Belcore is an American G.I., which gives the flirting a whole new accent.
The cast is strong. British Iranian soprano Soraya Mafi sings Adina. Tenor Anthony León, who won the international Operalia competition in 2022, is singing Nemorino for the first time in his career. Belcore is Mihai Damian, who won Operalia in 2025. Italian basso buffo Alessandro Corbelli, a legend in comic roles, plays Dulcamara, and Kayla Nanto, a winner at The Dallas Opera’s own Lone Star Vocal Competition, sings Adina’s friend Giannetta. The entire principal cast is making its Dallas Opera debut, and so is Spanish conductor Guillermo García Calvo, who leads the orchestra and chorus. It’s also the first opening night with David Lomelí as the company’s new general director.
A few tips for first-timers.
Don’t worry about the language. It’s sung in Italian, with English titles projected above the stage, so you won’t miss a single joke. You also don’t need a tuxedo. Plenty of people dress up, especially on opening night, but nobody is checking. If you’d like a little background first, baritone Hank Hammett hosts a free 30-minute talk an hour before each performance in the Margaret McDermott Performance Hall. There’s no talk on opening night, so pick the Sunday matinee or one of the later dates if that appeals to you.
The Elixir of Love plays Friday, October 9, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, October 11, at 2 p.m.; Wednesday, October 14, at 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday, October 17, at 7:30 p.m. The Winspear Opera House is at 2403 Flora St. in the Dallas Arts District. Tickets are available through The Dallas Opera.
Bring a date. Bring the friend who swears up and down they hate opera. Worst case, you’ll have a funny story about the night a con man in an opera house sold you on Donizetti. Best case, you’ll be humming that aria all the way to the car.
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