“The Elixir of Love”
February 14, 2021
THE famous tenor Mario Lanza, whose all too brief life and meteoric career ended when he died at the age of 38 in 1959, sings “Una Furtiva Lagrima,” an aria from Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” (“The Elixir of Love”).
In the opera, a poor peasant falls in love with a wealthy woman and, having no hope that she will return his love, he buys a love potion, which is actually cheap red wine sold by a trickster. In the aria, Nemorino, the peasant, sings of his belief that the potion has finally worked after seeing “a furtive tear” in the eyes of his beloved, Adina.
A translation:
A furtive tear
in her eyes appeared:
Those festive young girls
she seemed to envy.
What more need I look for?
What more need I look for?
She loves me! Yes, she loves me, I see it. I see it.
For a single instant the beats
of her beautiful heart to feel!
My sighs to confound
for a while with her sighs!
Her heartbeats, her heartbeats to feel,
my sighs with hers to merge
Heavens! One could die!
More I cannot ask, I cannot ask.
Oh, heavens! One could, one could die!
More I cannot ask, I cannot ask.
One could die! One could die of love!
