Airs Sarurday, March 31 at 12:00 noon. The 2011-12 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with a live broadcast of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore. Juan Diego Flórez stars as the simple villager Nemorino, opposite Diana Damrau as the beautiful Adina; Mariusz Kwiecien is Adina’s swaggering suitor, Belcore; and Alessandro Corbelli is the potion-peddling Doctor Dulcamara. Donato Renzetti conducts L’Elisir d’Amore, which will be heard live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 12 p.m. CT on Saturday, March 31.
Nemorino is Flórez’s eighth role at the Met. Last season, he sang the title role in the Met premiere of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory. The tenor has also starred in the new production premieres of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Bellini’s La Sonnambula, and Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment and Don Pasquale. Damrau, who sang opposite him as Countess Adèle in Le Comte Ory, has performed at the Met in a varied repertory encompassing stratospheric coloratura roles, such as Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, as well as bel canto heroines, including the title characters in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and La Fille du Régiment. Earlier this broadcast season, she reprised one of her most popular interpretations, Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
Last fall, Kwiecien overcame a dramatic last-minute back injury to sing the title role in Michael Grandage’s new production of Don Giovanni. A graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Kwiecien has since sung nearly 150 performances at the Met since his company debut in 1999, including three other recent new production premieres – as Dr. Malatesta in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (2006), Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor (2007), and Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen (2009). Corbelli made his Met debut as Dandini in the 1997 company premiere of La Cenerentola and sang Dulcamara for the first time in 2006. He has also sung Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola, Sulpice in the new production premiere of La Fille du Régiment, and Gianni Schicchi in the new production premiere of Puccini’s Il Trittico. Renzetti, the former Principal Conductor of the Arena di Verona, made his Met debut conducting La Bohème in 1989. Last season, he conducted a new production of L’Elisir d’Amore at La Scala.
The single intermission will include interviews with the stars.