love potion operas

Speranza

Perhaps we can expand a bit, as I do below.


At

http://www.asterisconet.it/news.php?n=9459&fr=347&s=0

a nice comparison is made between the 'dramatic use' of the love potion in Donizetti (and indeed Auber, as I recall) as it connects to Wagner and the original "Tristano ed Isotta". The gist seems to be that Tristano and Isotta cannot feel LOVE for each other -- what is this thing called 'love'? as it were -- for there is a LOVE potion involved, and as Adina states it in "Elisir" she does not need one.

Since the wiki entry for Gilbert and Sullivan's "Sorcerer" mentions the 'usual operatic' (as it were) plot of the love potion, with, specifically, people falling in love with the wrong ones, it may do to revise the Tristano/Isotta "love potion" theme connection, which is explicitly referred to both by Romani (Donizetti's librettist for "Elisir" -- as per the book that Adina is reading) and Scribe in his libretto for Auber's "Il filtro". Do we know what VERSION of "Tristano ed Isotta" Adina is reading, incidentally?

This from wiki is specific enough about 'variations on the theme of the love potion' WITHIN the "Tristano/Isotta" cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_and_Iseult

"Along the way, [Tristano/Isotta] [from Ireland to Cornwall -- as myriads of paintings represent it] ingest a love potion which causes the pair to
fall madly in love."

---- The origin of the love potion is clear enough: Isotta is NOT in love with "Re Marco di Cornovaglia" she is 'forced' to marry. It is ISOTTA's mother, with the aid of a witch (whose name is an interesting one), who gives Isotta the drink. For some reason, while aboard on the ship that will take her to Cornwall, Isotta mistakes it for poison and drinks it (as if to commit suicide) and offers it to Tristan. There is never an intention "to use the love potion to fall in love with each other" -- interestingly.

Now the wiki expands on variants:

"In the courtly version, the potion's effects last for a lifetime."

"In the common versions, the potion's effects wane after THREE years."

And in Donizetti, for just the operatic evening -- even if it's just "cheap" Bordeaux wine, as the libretto goes.

Wiki goes on:

"In some versions, they ingest the potion accidentally."

Or rather, Isotta drinks is herself and offers to Tristano thinking it's poison. Isotta would rather die than marry Marco (so her motivation is clear). Less clear, to me, why she wants to assassinate TRISTANO along the way, but then HE had killed her former lover (the one with the other interesting name).

Wiki goes on:

"In others, the potion's maker instructs [ISOTTA] to share it with [MARCO]..."

This must have been Isotta's mother idea -- note that in Donizetti, the focus is, incidentally, on Nemorino just drinking it, rather than sharing it with Adina.

"... but she deliberately gives it to Tristano instead."

"Although Isotta marries Marco, she and Tristano are forced by the potion to seek one another as lovers."

The point of the triangle is maintained in Donizetti by "Belcore, sergente di guarnigione", and indeed by Scribe in his version for "Il filtro" (how close was Romani's and Donizetti's acquaintance with this, though?).

Wiki goes on:

"Although the typical noble Arthurian character would be shamed from such an act,

the love potion that controls them frees Tristan and Iseult from responsibility."

I would argue that THIS IMPORTANT PHILOSOPHICAL point is what interested Donizetti (and Romani) as it were. (A less philosophical interest, it is said, is that Donizetti wanted to have a Scribe connection, as his rival Bellini had, with his Sonnambula, the previous year -- Scribe being the hot librettist that he was).

The wiki goes on:

"The king's advisors repeatedly try to have the pair tried for adultery, but again and again the couple use trickery to preserve their façade of innocence."

"In Béroul's version, the love potion eventually wears off, and the two lovers are free to make THEIR OWN CHOICE [emphasis Speranza's] as to whether they cease their adulterous lifestyle or continue" -- which agrees, broadly, and philosophically, with Donizetti's 'parody' (or "melodramma giocoso" -- for this is what it was).

An online article on witchcraft mentions that love potions were used already by Roman emperors (or their wives, rather) -- and since Italian opera is an offspring of this "Greco-Roman" tradition, it would do to consider how the love potion ever made it, in the first place, to what we may call an 'opera libretto'. (The "Sorcerer" wiki entry gives good information on the different items by Gilbert on what seems to have been one of his favourite plots ever).