BY KAREN BOSSICK

Learn just what is “L’Elisir d’Amore,” or “The Elixir of Love” is when MET HD: Live Operas screens Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera on Saturday, Feb. 10.

The popular operatic comedy will start at 10 a.m. at Big Wood 4 Cinemas in Hailey and will run for two hours 39 minutes with one intermission.

The story involves a poor peasant named Nemorino who is in love with Adina, a beautiful landowner who is indifferent to him. When he hears her reading the story of Tristan and Isolde, he is convinced that a magic potion will help him gain her love and he believes he can get it from a traveling quack doctor.

The love potion is just cheap wine. But it emboldens Nemorino, prompting Adrina to claim she plans to  marry a self-important sergeant whom she really has no intention of marrying. 

The comic opera written by the Italian composer  premiered in 1832 at Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan. The Met premiered it in 1904.

It was the most often performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848 and today remains one of Donizetti’s most frequently performed operas.

The Metropolitan Opera’s production will feature Pretty Yende as Adina opposite Matthew Polenzani, who enthralled Met audiences as Nemorino with his ravishing “Una furtiva lagrima.”

The Bartlett Sher production featuring  conductor Domingo Hindoyan is considered charming with deft comedic timing but also emotionally revealing.

The story combines comic archetypes with a degree of genuine character development, which is rare in works of this type. And, while its ending is a foregone conclusion, the joy is in the journey and Donizetti’s score appealing.