Stream: Le Comte Ory
Rossini isn’t for everyone. Some years ago, a former colleague who regularly used to arrive earlier than me in the day-ticket queue at the Festival Theatre, sneaked back to whisper a delicate suggestion. He could get two tickets, and would I like to buy his spare ticket from him? “My wife hates these operas where they just repeat the words over and over.” So it’s a bit of an acquired taste. But those of us who have acquired it have enjoyed a feast over the last twenty years, when the quality of the singing and the numbers of high-profile productions of formerly obscure Rossini operas have never been bettered.
“Can Rossini ever have heard – or imagined his music better sung than it was here?” The critic, Rupert Christiansen’s comment on La Donna del Lago is the feeling most audiences have after hearing Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Florez. Each of them is a consummate artist, prepared to put in the preparation necessary for these colaratura runs, high notes and florid improvisations. “It is hard work,” Florez acknowledges in the interval interview of Le Comte Ory. And they can both act. Sitting at the side of the Stalls Circle at Covent Garden in 2014, I was only several feet away from Joyce DiDonato as Maria Stuarda, as she hissed “vil bastarda” at her cousin, Elizabeth. A chilling experience.
Together they have formed a unique partnership in four Rossini comic operas, The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola, La Donna del Lago and this one, Le Comte Ory. They’re both 50 now, and decided a few years ago that they wouldn’t sing them again, so these recordings from the Met give us the chance to re-discover these treats. The Met has already shown their Barber of Seville and are showing La Cenerentola on Sunday 26th – Monday 27th April.
Le Comte Ory is Rossini’s last comic opera. It was written for the Paris stage in 1828 and so is in French. It’s set in a castle in the 1200s where the women wait at home for their husbands who have gone to the crusades. Le Comte Ory has not gone to war, and, as in most stories written about this period – pretty much ever since it happened – he is intent on finding out what these women are prepared to get up to in the meantime. Florez is the Comte and DiDonato is not the love interest but his page, Isolier Like most mezzos, she spent a lot of her earlier years in trouser roles, and still swaggers with the best of them. Florez, handsome though he is, has no qualms about spending most of the opera in comic disguises. In the First Act he is dressed as a hermit, in white robe and enormous beard. As confidante to the ladies he hears their secrets and can snuggle up without fear of reproach. The close-ups in the film give us the full benefit of his array of sympathetic glances, winks and leers. His aria with female chorus is wonderful, very funny, but yes, he gets these high notes too. The highlight of this Act is his duet with DiDonato – musically astonishing, but the stage dynamic between them works so well too. Both Ory and his page have designs on the unmarried lady of the castle – the Comtesse Adele, played by soprano, Diana Damrau, whose first appearance isn’t until near the end of Act I. She sings well, and certainly has all the notes, but at first I was disappointed in her acting ability, and felt she was trying too hard. I was much more impressed with her later, and her performance in Act II was terrific.
Barlett’s Sher’s direction is a mixed blessing. Florez said he found him wonderful to work with as he always listens to the performers. Certainly his work on the comic set pieces and the timing of individual details can’t be faulted. But as in his staging for the Met Barber of Seville, seen recently, the costumes and set are too fussy. The performance is meant to be on the kind of stage that would be found in a 19th century theatre, so there’s a smaller stage with mock lighting on top of the real Met stage, and the antique machines for sound effects – thunder sheet and a wind-machine – can be seen in use in Act 2. There’s one of these ghastly doddery disheveled not-very-comic servants as an omnipresent stage hand, and chorus’s costumes veer towards the pantomimic. With so much genuine comic talent on stage, none of this seems necessary. But after a few initial groans, I found it didn’t hamper my enjoyment.
One highlight of the performance and the costumes is the appearance of Florez and his men dressed as nuns. After being unmasked (unbearded?) in his hermit disguise, this is his next ploy for getting into the castle. It’s worth noting that although there are passages throughout the opera of lovely solo singing, there are no real arias for the main characters, and the best music is found in the ensembles. An intricate seven-part ensemble ends the first Act, and a lovely trio for the three principals comes toward the end of Act II. Before that Florez leads this nuns’ chorus in a drinking song which brings the house down. You’ve scarcely recovered from seeing his pirouette with robe flailing when he forms part of the increasingly raucous chorus line, many with beards, having a knees-up. Damrau as the Countess is very funny here. Still convinced she has carried out her Christian duty in rescuing these poor sisters, she keeps a po-face as she pats the hairy chins.
But Isolier has already captured her heart before Ory attempts to get into her bedroom. A mistaken identity scene ensues. Like the last scene of The Marriage of Figaro, the audience can see all the action, but have to imagine that the characters can hear – and feel - each other but are in complete darkness. The three-in-a bed scene is hilarious, but beautifully, indeed ravishingly, well sung. When he conducted Le Comte Ory, Franz Liszt said the music “bubbled like champagne,” and tonight’s conductor, Maurizio Benini and the Met Orchestra certainly keep it fizzing.
This 2011 production was the opera’s first performance at the Met. Unlike other of the Florez/DiDonato Rossini pairings, it wasn’t seen at Covent Garden. The DVD from the Met is available to buy, and free on YouTube is the 1997 Glyndebourne recording, with nodding cows and medieval costumes as in the Book of Hours, but a fine cast including Diana Montague (once a lovely Cherubino for Scottish Opera) as Isolier.
Rossini was Donald Macleod’s Radio 3 Composer of the Week from 13th to 17th April, and the five programmes can be found on BBC Sounds. The Act II trio from Le Comte Ory features in the last one.
