Although it may seem unnecessary to say so, sometimes opera can be fun. Italian comic opera can be musically formulaic, simplistic in plot, and even thin on entertainment. However, the best examples, when presented well, are irresistibly light-hearted. Washington National Opera‘s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore is just that. Yes, it’s a silly story and the characters are flimsy, the staging is a reprise of Stephen Lawless’s 1997 version — altered in minor ways this time without the director’s approval — but it is well sung, beautiful to look at, and just plain fun.

Felice Romani’s libretto revolves around the love-hate relationship between the tenor and soprano roles, a country bumpkin named Nemorino (Paul Groves) and a supercilious woman of quality named Adina (Elizabeth Futral). This couple is familiar to us in any number of guises on modern television: the man and woman — Dr. Fleischman and Maggie on Northern Exposure, Mulder and Scully on The X-Files, Josh and Donna on The West Wing, put your favorite television show here — whose antagonistic relationship you tune in for week after week, sure that it will eventually turn into love. Well, it’s the same thing here, except that we are in a rural village in the Basque country, and everyone sings all the time.

The flirtatious Adina thoroughly enjoys Nemorino’s attention, while at the same time regularly crushing his hopes. In the opening scene, she tells the chorus about the story she has been reading, the love tragedy of Tristan and Isolde, which becomes a running reference throughout the opera. Little could Donizetti have known, in 1832, that a German composer named Richard Wagner would write a world-changing opera on that very story 30 years later. This did not prevent the pianist accompanying the recitatives, Adelle Eslinger, when a character mentions the magic potion that causes the tragic love between Tristan and Isolde, from playing Wagner’s famous, unresolved chord progression associated with that love.