By David Rubin
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Some of the drama accompanying the Metropolitan Opera’s matinee offering of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory on April 9 came about 35 minutes before the 1 p.m. curtain. That is when Juan Diego Florez’s first child arrived in a home birth. Florez helped ease his son into the world and then raced to the opera house. Fortunately his character, Ory, does not appear until well into the first act.

Florez had been up all night with his wife, so he was singing on pure joy and adrenalin. And what a performance he gave. Perhaps inspired by the new papa, the entire cast performed at a level that was astonishing in its assured delivery of Rossini’s taxing vocal line. This was clearly an afternoon for lovers of the voice.

Rossini’s second-to-last opera (with only the great William Tell to come) is a rarity in New York. The Met had never performed it. New York City Opera offered it in English in the late 1970s with Rockwell Blake, Ashley Putnam and Faith Esham, plus the young Sam Ramey in the role of the Tutor.

Dramatically Le Comte Ory is absurd rubbish, which is one reason it is rarely done, even though the music is glorious. Rossini was searching for a vehicle on which to hang music he had written for the coronation of Charles the Tenth. This piece is Il viaggio a Reims. It is occasionally offered under festival conditions as a singing spectacular, but it’s not an opera. So Rossini grabbed a story about a real-life Don Juan character (Ory) from an 18th century ballad and stuffed some of the Reims music into it.

The other reason Le Comte Ory is such a rarity is that it requires three spectacular singers in the lead roles, and three really good singers in the subsidiary roles. Such singers are often not available at any price.

For this production the Met assembled three of the leading bel canto singers in the world: tenor Florez as the randy young Count Ory who is in pursuit of the Countess Adele, and every other woman on stage; soprano Diana Damrau as Adele, who has sworn off sex until her brother returns from the Crusades; and mezzo Joyce DiDonato in the pants role of Isolier, Ory’s page, who is his rival for the affections of Adele.

Nor did the Met stint on the supporting cast, which also has tuneful and difficult music to sing. Baritone Michele Pertusi was Ory’s tutor who is trying to track Ory down and bring him back to the castle of his father. Baritone Stephane Degout was Raimbaud, Ory’s friend and enforcer. And mezzo Susanne Resmark was Dame Ragonde, servant to Adele.

The vocal highlights could fill a CD by themselves. In Act 2 Ory, disguised as a nun, woos Adele in a splendid duet. This is soon followed by a glorious trio for Ory, Adele and Isolier in which Ory thinks he is wooing Adele, and not Isolier. (In this staging all three are in the same bed in the dark, sort of. It’s crude and unfunny.) Act 1 includes a number for the tutor and female chorus that helped make Ramey’s reputation when he sang it at City Opera. The act ends with a typically bouncy Rossini theme for the leads and chorus, ripped straight from Reims, in which all exclaim on the confusion of the moment. (Think Barber of Seville.) Once you hear the tunes in this Act 1 finale, you will never forget them.

Florez was in typically firm and assured voice. The very, very top turns a bit nasal, but he is right on pitch and totally assured. His comic timing is exquisite and he seems to be having great fun, even when singing the most difficult music. The audience never has to worry that Florez won’t hit the high notes. He always does, and he holds them. He repeatedly cut through the male chorus of his followers with high notes as they were getting drunk on expensive wine, each note nailed to the wall. Florez is a heartthrob, but in this staging he was dressed as an ancient Hebrew prophet in Act 1, complete with scraggly beard and wig. In Act 2 he was wrapped in a nun’s habit. Nevertheless the Florez charisma and charm came through.

We are living in a golden age of mezzo-sopranos. Joyce DiDonato is one, along with Susan Graham, Stephanie Blythe, Jennifer Larmore, and many more. DiDonato has an open, androgynous, handsome face that suits the pants role of Isolier perfectly. She could be a man, or a woman. Dressed in a long red leather jacket and boots she looked every bit the page to a nobleman. She blended deliciously with Florez and Damrau in the concluding trio. Her voice is not as dusky as some mezzos. Hers is clearer and sweeter. From lows to highs she can handle everything.

The high-flying soprano Damrau has been a successful Rosina at the Met, and she was enchanting as Aithra in the Strauss rarity The Egyptian Helen. Mozart, Rossini, Strauss—she can sing it all. She is a dazzling blond; her beauty was shown to good advantage in royal gowns of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The role of Adele lies high but posed no troubles for her. She handled the hijinks in the staging with a knowing coyness. It is hard to imagine singing more assured and beautiful.

Of the three lesser characters, Michele Pertusi as the Tutor dispatched his Act 1 aria with great skill and deserved a better ovation from the Met audience.

Susanne Resmark has quite a bit to sing as Dame Ragonde, Adele’s attendant. Her voice is strong and smoky. She established her own authoritative stage presence, although her ample bosom, pushed up in an absurdly low cut dress, usually stole attention from her singing. The extreme close-ups in the Met telecast did her costume, and overflowing bosom, no favors.

Special attention should be paid to Stephane Degout in the baritone part of Raimbaud, Ory’s sidekick. He delivered an energetic aria in Act 2 with the male chorus of "nuns" after he has stolen some cases of wine from the cellar of the castle. Degout’s voice is strong with a menacing growl. He has been singing all over the world, principally in Europe, for more than a decade. This season he was also in the Met’s Pelleas. He should be better known here.

Director Bartlett Sher (of South Pacific revival fame) didn’t have much to work with dramatically. When the plot pivots on the return of medieval French Crusaders with Saracen blood on their swords, it’s probably best to ignore the period setting lest the audience dwell on current Middle East problems.

Sher constructed an early nineteenth century stage within the Met’s stage. The opera was offered as it might have looked when Rossini wrote it. Faux gas lamps lit the stage. A shambling stagehand in raggedy 1820s garb appeared during the overture to set the scene. He was on stage throughout along with other costumed stagehands who carried trees and benches and who manipulated stage-machinery in full view of the audience. They used a winch to raise chandeliers at the start—perhaps in honor of the Met’s own ascending chandeliers. They cranked a wind machine and shook a sheet of metal to create thunder for a typical Rossini storm scene in Act 2. (Rossini stuck all his old tricks into this opera to try to give it some life.)

But no director could make this creaky vehicle either funny or comprehensible. At least it was fun to watch, and the costumes, in reds and purples and peaches, were a delight.

If you like an opera that’s about something serious –– Don Carlo, Wozzeck, Meistersinger, Cosi –– then Le Comte Ory is not for you. But if you want a singing festival with two hours of bel canto music that will put a grin on your face, this is it.

Details Box:
What: Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, simulcast live in HD
When: April 9, 2011
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Time of performance: about 3 hours
Cast: Maurizio Benini; Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Susanne Resmark, Juan Diego Flórez, Stéphane Degout, Michele Pertusi
Encore performance: Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
Next simulcast: Strauss’s Capriccio, April 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET