Elixir of Love @ Seattle Opera (Seattle Center)

Music by Gaetano Donizetti
Libretto by Felice Romani

Love, laughs, and liquor. Utterly enjoyable from first sip to last, this fizzy concoction is opera’s most winning comedy. A lovestruck bumpkin is about to lose the company of a rich and independent landowner. Crossing paths with a quack doctor, he soon gets duped in more ways than one. Wine, a windfall, and a fateful “furtive tear” eventually reveal happy truths as sincerity triumphs amid much rejoicing.

This new-to-Seattle production is set in the 1940s, with the debuts of four-internationally renowned singers performing Donizetti’s bubbly bel canto including the famous tenor aria “Una furtiva lagrima.”

In Italian with English subtitles

Runs 2 hours 40 minutes, with one intermission

Tickets ($42+) here.