First staged at the Teatro alla Canobbiana, Milan, on 12 May 1832, right from the première, L'elisir d'amore became a classic of nineteenth-century opera. In truth it was a rather atypical classic since, unlike the vast majority of Romantic-age operas, it did not belong to the serious genre. On the other hand, although not strictly necessary, it's interesting to note that not even the typical features of traditional comic opera con fully account for L'elisir and that the subtitle of melodramma giocoso does not fit the real content of the plot and expressive power of the music. It would be more accurate to ascribe it to an intermediate genre that had been defined as opera semiseria or comédie larmoyante. Since the second half of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth this genre had become the mein vehicle for bourgeois self-identification by focusing on the seriousness of the emotional content, meant to be an edifying means of moving audiences.
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