Slowly the camera roams through the narrow streets of Macerata, past the cathedral, the monuments, the library and the university, until it reaches the Arena Sferisterio. In the 1820s this was a competition venue for a handball game popular at that time. At the beginning of the twentieth century the ‘neo-classical monster’, as the stadium is disrespectfully called in the vernacular, was also discovered as an opera venue and a dazzling backdrop for the ‘Macerata Opera Festival’. The stage, which is 14.5 meters deep and 40 meters wide, is sufficiently large for all kinds of events and spectacles to be staged. At the end of July 2002 the time had come again. An audience of 5000 had gathered to listen to the new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore under the direction Saverio Marconi, conducted by Niels Muus.

The musical notes of this Puccini masterpiece provide the starting point and foundation for a new, highly successful collaboration between Riccardo Chailly and Davide Livermore. In their interpretation, there is “no moment, no movement, that goes against the musical meaning” (R. Chailly). The result is an energetic, authentic, and atmospherically strong Bohème, “in which every sacred phrase receives its own orchestral colour, its own dynamic and its own expression.” (Corriere della Sera)

"This Bohème is a glorious vindication of traditional staging at its imaginative, re-creative best. Giancarlo Del Monaco here turns his attention to the much more popular work and comes up with a humdinger of a production, beautifully set by Michael Scott in period, fast-moving and full of pertinent detail." (Gramophone)