LE COMTE ORY
STAGE DIRECTOR: Bartlett Sher
CONDUCTOR: Maurizio Benini
CAST: Juan Diego Flórez, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Stéphane Degout, Susanne Resmark, Michele Pertusi
SET DESIGNS: Michael Yeargan
COSTUMES: Catherine Zuber
RUNNING TIME: 163 minutes
RATING: *****
Rossini’s final comic opera is a blast and a romp, but it could also easily have been a shambles. He did something dangerous – using old material he’d already written three years before for his Italian opera Il viaggio a Reims. He made it much stronger and funnier for this reworking in French.
In 1827, soon after moving to Paris, Rossini started work on Le Comte Ory and, apart from a duet between Count Ory and his page, exclusively used material from Reims in Act I. Rossini was a genius in recycling – no doubt the greenest composer since Handel.
Notwithstanding this, he decided to write new music for Act II and inspired it mostly is.
It is a virtuoso and in parts of the opera also a very pure form of bel canto: beautiful vocal lines, but with a French twist. Many commentators view Le Comte Ory as being the finest of all French-language comic operas.
The story’s background was already established as a typical example of French vaudeville during 1816.
Count Ory is a dissolute man. In many ways he can be compared with Don Giovanni, who Mozart immortalised in his opera.
Countess Adèle is Ory’s bait. She’s left without any male protection when her brother joins the Crusades. The count’s page, Isolier, unwittingly helps Ory, but he’s also in love with the countess.
The count disguises himself as an ascetic hermit who can see the future. He contrives to meet Adèle and tells her that love will cure her melancholy. To everyone’s horror, his identity is revealed.
Soon afterwards Adèle feels it is her calling to provide hospitality to a party of travelling nuns. Ory is “Sister Colette” in disguise and the others his male friends.
When Isolier learns of this, he becomes suspicious and tries to stop Ory’s attempts to woo the countess. This happens when all three characters in this love triangle are in the same bed, singing a trio with phrases that have a grace of tone and movement.
Trumpets announce the Crusaders’ return. All is revealed. Isolier helps Ory to escape.
In this first production at the Metropolitan Opera – 183 years after the Paris premiere! – we are confronted by the opera’s potential brilliance on all levels. The golden thread is its world-class casting: the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez (Ory), the German soprano Diana Damrau (Adèle) and the American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato (Isolier).
Flórez has the agility and lyrical quality for this role, a unique one in bel canto repertory. He reaches high Cs and Ds with ease, is a responsive singer and actor and knows exactly how not to overstep the limits set to the serious and extremely farcical elements.
Damrau shows her true colours – vocally as well as in her characterisation of the wary countess. Her skilful negotiation of all the trills and leaps has real sparkle, while the moment when she nearly goes into a stupor is brilliantly projected.
DiDonato oozes a liveliness and charm in the trouser role of Isolier.
All the other singers fully complement the amazing frisson the three principals elicit.
With Bartlett Sher, a visionary stage director in this genre, and Maurizio Benini, a conductor who keeps the sparks flying, experiencing this is no doubt one of life’s few infallible tonics.
Flórez became a father 35 minutes before this filmed matinee performance started. He held his newborn son, Leandro, for a short while before rushing to the opera house. Opera is, after all, life-enhancing.