In 1832, the year Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love" premiered, a contemporary Italian village presented a plausible setting for a quack duping townsfolk with bogus potions. But in updating the comic opera to America, director James Robinson and set designer Allen Moyer had to travel back to the Midwest around 1910 to capture the same sentiment when they created this production for Opera Colorado and others.

Are we really that removed from cultural innocence? The Pittsburgh Opera's staging of Robinson's production Saturday night at the Benedum Center answers in the affirmative. We occasionally all still get fooled again, but for the most part, suspicion is built into American society. Despite a brief resurgence in the '50s, naivety pretty much hit the road with World War I.

The mere fact that Robinson's production can raise such sobering thoughts with a plot revolving around drinking wine (thought to be the magic elixir) is a credit to the director. Similar American settings have been used before, but "The Music Man" era setting fit Donizetti's melodramma giocoso perfectly. The subtleties of the Italian original found new homes in American archetypes such as gossiping ladies, football players, village green festivities and provincial attitudes.

The scrim opened on a town square dominated by a white gazebo, bustling with men in overalls or straw hats and women in long cotton dresses. An ice cream peddler (with local product placement in tow), Nemorino (tenor John Nuzzo), is hopelessly love-struck by the beautiful, spirited Adina (soprano Elizabeth Futral). She enjoys his attention, but gets starry-eyed herself for a soldier, Sergeant Belcore (baritone Palle Knudsen).

But attention soon shifted from them to one of buffa's most major of minor characters, the traveling con artist Doctor Dulcamara. Here was Kevin Glavin, the Pittsburgh comic bass who steals scenes with the mere raising of an eyebrow and brings the house down with the shaking of his considerable girth, attired in a flamboyant purple suit. He dispensed buffoonery as well as fraudulent elixirs. Donizetti asks for much more from the role and Glavin delivered, singing the quick and propulsive flurries with character, especially in duet with Futral.

Futral's Adina was flighty and feisty, supported by tremendous acting and solid technique. She crafted a natural and believable demeanor, with quick facial expressions, shifts of vocal timbre and mastery of coloratura. She did appear to tire a bit in in the high registers in Act 2, but her delivery of the role was overall a delight.

While attractive and lyric, Nuzzo's voice lacked support. Written for light lyric tenor, it still needs stalwart underpinnings. Too often he reached up for notes rather than firmly inhabited them. His phrasing was sensitive, but as the famous romanza, "Una furtiva lagrima" showed, more presence was needed to unleash Donizetti's finer details. Nuzzo was charming, but this is a work that showcases the tenor, exposing him at times.

Knudsen was outstanding as a kind of Hogan's Heroes military dunderhead, and he sang with admirable discipline and lovely weight. Constantly dragging on cigarettes (becoming a new symbol for bad guys in opera) he bullied characters while blending with them. Soprano Deborah Selig, a Pittsburgh Opera Center artist, showed promise in her brief but articulate appearances as Giannetta.

Conductor Steven White exhibited a rapport with the singers and brought a graceful approach to phrasing the orchestra. The use of a fortepiano instead of a harpsichord for the secco recitatives was not only historically accurate but wonderfully refreshing and winning in its more rounded timbre. The chorus, prepared by Mark Trawka, was excellent throughout, both in ensemble and in portraying the townsfolk, except for one odd young girl in overalls whose bit as a tomboy never quite worked.