Classical music: Zesty flavour in sip of Elixir

The Elixir of Love features Elli Bortolotti (Adina), Murray Dahm (Dr Dulcamara) and Peter-John Layton (Nemorino). Photo / Michele Mossop

Sally Sloman has always described her Opera Factory as off-Broadway, by which she means a hop, skip and jump from Newmarket rather than down the road from Times Square.

Next week, Opera Factory hosts a production of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love, staged by Sydney-based Opera Bites.

This self-described boutique company was set up by Kiwi singers Murray Dahm and Rae Levien, who met 16 years ago when they were emerging artists with New Zealand Opera.

Founded in 2001, Opera Bites was an attempt to diversify the Sydney operatic scene, as well as to provide the opportunity to "work with colleagues we enjoy working with," Dahm explains.

Productions may call on just a small band of singers with piano, but this enables Dahm to present "opera in non-conventional venues", with one of the most exotic the troupe's regular trips into Australia's Outback, where The Elixir of Love was last year's hit.

"Undara is four hours from Cairns and two hours from the nearest small town," says Dahm. "It's a magical place and it was strangely incongruous to be delivering Donizetti in natural surroundings that go back thousands of years. People travelled hundreds of kilometres to come to the show and, for some, this was their first operatic experience."

And it was not only the human audience that savoured the delights of opera. "We had kangaroos sitting under the trees behind us," Dahm laughs. "And it's always fun when the kookaburras join in the singing - although they are rather loud birds."

Donizetti's 1832 work is a classic opera buffa, mellowed by the romantic spirit of its time. The tangle of a plot has a well-to-do heroine, Adina, choosing the simple peasant Nemorino over the swaggering military man, Belcore, while the travelling quack, Dr Dulcamara, peddles his pills and other stimulants.

In 2004, Daniel Slater's high-powered production for NBR New Zealand Opera updated the opera to the 1980s, making it into a sort of bel canto Grease. Slater spoke to me at the time of dividing the chorus into three cliques of high school students - cool girls, geeky boys and jock boys.

Opera Bites does not have such luxuries with a cast of seven, including Dahm as the rascally Dulcamara and Rae Levien as Adina's sidekick, Giannetta.

But even here, limitations have brought about ingenious touches such as Donizetti's choruses being handled by Eddie Muliaumaseali'i and Sarah Sweeting.

(Just a few months ago, Muliaumaseali'i was one of the soloists in Manukau Symphony Orchestra's We Are Pasifika concert.)

"Eddie and Sarah, singing the chorus part, become the characters of Pedro and Margarita," Dahm explains, stressing that this production is very much a "fully costumed and fully functioning piece of drama".

Dahm knows his opera. His daytime job has him flying around Australia under the auspices of the well-established WotOpera programme.

"WotOpera was started in 2008 by Graeme Wood, who's best known as the man behind the travel site, Wotif. For five weeks at a time I might be in Hobart or Brisbane, teaching youngsters about opera by getting them to make one of their own."

As for Aucklanders who might not be totally comfortable in the opera house, Dahm has no hesitation in recommending The Elixir of Love.

"The story is wonderfully kooky and attractive," he says. "And the music is tune after tune. Everyone knows Una furtive lagrima, but all the music in Elixir is terrific. Donizetti wrote over 70 operas. Most people can name three, some manage five and a few get up to 10. But there are so many more still out there."

Performance

What: The Elixir of Love

Where and when: Opera Factory, 7 Eden St, Newmarket, February 5-8 at 7.30pm, plus a Saturday matinee at 2pm