The Teatro Lirico is a theatre in Milan, Italy. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it hosted numerous opera performances, including the world premieres of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Giordano's Fedora. The theatre, located on Via Rastrelli, closed in 1998. However, a restoration project was begun in April 2007, and it has finally re-opened in December 2021 as the Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber.
Stage Entertainment carried on the renovation of the Theatre, completing all finishes and all workings started by the administration "Comune di Milano".
The stage setting for Rossini's Le Comte Ory as performed at the Teatro alla Canobbiana in 1830
Interior of the Teatro Lirico in 1938, after the restoration of Antonio Cassi Ramelli
L'elisir d'amore is a melodramma giocoso in two acts by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's Le philtre (1831). The opera premiered on 12 May 1832 at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan.
Giuseppe Frezzolini as Dulcamara in the premiere of the opera
Title page of the libretto published by Ricordi
"Dr. Dulcamara" (Andrew Foldi), an itinerant quack and purveyor of "elixirs" and other tonics, gestures to "Cochise" (Bruce Cooper), his sly trumpet-playing assistant, to call together the townspeople as he sings his act 1 (scene 2) aria "Udite, udite, o rustici" (Hear me, hear me, o peasants) in a performance of the Cincinnati Opera's 1968 "Wild West" production of L'elisir d'amore, in which the 1832 opera's setting was moved from a village in the Basque country to 1870s Texas.
Disegno per copertina di libretto, drawing for L'elisir d'amore (undated).