Fiona Chisholm
TENOR Colin Lee and soprano Pretty Yende will make a bit of artistic history on Saturday when the South African opera stars appear together at La Scala Milan in Rossini’s final comic masterpiece
Lee, who grew up in Pinelands but lives in London, takes on the eponymous role of Count Ory, a sort of prankster Don Giovanni from the time of the Crusades. His target is Adele, Countess of Formoutier, sung by the Mpumalang -born Yende. She reprises the role in which she made her Met debut last year when suddenly called to replace the Georgian coloratura soprano Nino Machaidze.
“Pretty and I are having fun working together for the first time in a production and it’s been good for us to get to know each other,” emailed Lee between rehearsals for the season directed, designed and costumed in modern dress by Laurent Pelly.
Like Rossini’s popular Il Barbiere de Seville, the vivacious score of Le Comte Ory contains dazzling bel canto vocals – just up the street of both Lee and Yende as they enact the comedy about Ory’s plan to seduce Adele left in the castle when her brother goes off to the Holy Land.
“To gain entry to the castle Ory spends the first act disguised as a hairy hermit and the second act running around as a pilgrim nun,” Lee explained. “But he is foiled by his manservant Isolier (a trouser role played by a woman) and they all end up in bed together with Ory thinking he is being intimate with Adele when it is with Isolier.
“So it is wonderfully subversive and double-edged for the audience and the singers both in reality and in the story being told. It is outrageous now and even more so in Rossini’s time!”
Lee’s three performances on July 12, 15 and 19 at La Scala with Yende, complete his five major world Opera House Grand Slam – only the third South African after the late Deon van der Walt and Johan Botha to have achieved this. However owing to the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez feeling ill on opening night on July 4 and cancelling his next two performances as Ory, Lee will be partnering Aleksandra Kurzak as Adele before appearing with Yende on Saturday under the baton of Donato Renzetti.
Lee recently returned from Moscow where he sang Elvino in Bellini’s La sonnambula at the Bolshoi – the role for which he was also nominated by the Bolshoi as best Male Opera performer in 2013 in the annual “Golden Mask Awards” held in April.
“It is the highest cultural award offered in the Russian Federation and the non-Russian Federation artists are almost never nominated.”
Yende gained international acclaim in 2010 when she became the first artist in the history of the Belvedere Competition (currently on the go) to win first prize in every category.
She has been based in Milan for over five years, speaks fluent Italian and is learning French and German, the other two primary languages of opera.