Of all the directors you could have thought of to excise the japes from Donizetti’s opera buffa, Annabel Arden seems one of the unlikeliest. She comes from the world of physical theatre; her last production for Glyndebourne, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, featured an aerialist slithering around the stage as the eponymous corpse.

But Arden has followed that success with an almost Chekhovian response to Donizetti, fashioning a tender social comedy that should travel seamlessly around the country for Glyndebourne’s touring wing, and will no doubt please future festival punters as well.

Perhaps it would be churlish to ask for some humour back. Ultimately, Donizetti’s comedy about a wealthy landowner (Adina) and her simpleton admirer (Nemorino) is more rom-com than com, and Arden’s delicate response – a vaguely 1930s setting, well evoked by Lez Brotherston’s sun-baked town square - is a good emotional fit. Adriana Kucerova’s feisty Adina is a free spirit in Katharine Hepburn slacks; Peter Auty’s almost tragically befuddled Nemorino is the village electrician. In a neat touch, the quack doctor Dulcamara, peddling his fake love potion, arrives in town with a tattooed sidekick and wows the peasantry with a slideshow.

It could be a little sharper and wittier. Making Nemorino’s love rival Belcore – the suitably oleaginous Massimo Cavalletti – a Mussolini-era blackshirt is an underdeveloped conceit, and Luciano Di Pasquale’s slightly foggy Dulcamara is surely played just a little too straight. But there are touching performances from Kucerova and Auty, and Enrique Mazzola’s conducting fizzes. It’s not quite champagne, but this elixir definitely slips down as refreshingly as a good prosecco.

— Box office: 01273 813813. Then touring

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