by Sasha Soren
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For today’s love potion, we’d like to share a lovely aria connected to the subject of – love potions.
In L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love), the young hero, Nemorino, spends the last of his money to obtain a love potion from a traveling purveyor of potions, who sells it to him for ‘the price of whatever you have in your pocket.’
In the grand tradition of traveling quacks, the love philtre is, of course, a phony, being just a bottle of red wine.
But Nemorino is so convinced that the potion will work that he’s overly confident that he’ll win the love of the beautiful Adina. They meet and she playfully teases him without mercy, but he treats her with indifference.
❤ Lyrics in Italian and English
❤ Second version, with English subtitles
Secretly, Adina does indeed love the callow Nemorino, but out of injured pride, she instead accepts the marriage proposal of the pompous Sergeant Belcore.
To up the ante and wipe the gloating smile off Nemorino’s face, she proposes that she and Belcore marry that very same day, before his regiment ships off.
Belcore is overjoyed with his fine catch, Adina despairs that the imminent nuptials won’t spur Nemorino to act, and Nemorino rushes off in a panic, bewildered and looking for another love potion to make Adina love him.
A very fine mess of tangled hearts ensues.
All’s well that ends well, though, when the sulking Nemorino suddenly realizes something crucial; while recalling Adina’s face while he spoke to her, he remembers seeing one irrefutable proof of love in her eyes that no love potion could ever deliver - a single, furtive tear.
In the video above, Nemorino sings the lovely aria ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ (‘A furtive tear’), where he realizes that love is the secret cause of her unhappiness, and that – love potion or no love potion – he’s already captured her heart and true love might very well save the day.
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by Sasha Soren
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