Rossini’s Comte Ory was premiered in 1828. It
finally made it to the Met in 2011, and to celebrate the occasion
this performance was beamed live into cinemas around the world
and now gets its release on DVD. The long delay in it reaching
New York is easy to explain. The three principals all have to
be bel canto wonders, tossing off high notes, roulades
and runs with merry abandon. Happily, the Met assembled probably
the three finest exponents of these roles you could find anywhere
today.
No-one would even consider mounting Ory without a tenor
of near miraculous flexibility to sing the title role. Enter
Juan Diego Flórez, a bel canto singer without
parallel, who previously added Ory to his repertoire at the
Rossini Festival in Pesaro - and made an audio recording for
DG in 2003. I’ve been lucky enough to hear Flórez
in the theatre a few times and every time I come away marvelling
that such sounds as his are possible. We’ll never know
for sure, but I’m certain that even in Rossini’s
own day the composer himself never heard his work sung as well
as this. The purity and lightness of Flórez’s voice
is astounding. The pyrotechnics of the Count’s part are
despatched with miraculous ease, and he scales the dizzy heights
above the stave without so much as breaking a sweat, let alone
pausing for breath. Not everyone enjoys the sheer brightness
of his voice, and for some his timbre is like being dazzled
by oncoming headlights, but I’m a fully signed up fan
and I think his colour suits the repertoire (and the role) very
well. He isn’t quite so skilled as an actor, and the moments
where he cavorts around dressed as a Mother Superior are pretty
hackneyed, more often than not reverting to a stock gesture
or expression, but you’d have to be the most devoted adherent
to the Gesamtkunstwerk principle to object to his performance
on the basis of this. If we ever hear another Ory as good as
this then I’ll be very surprised.
Happily, he is partnered by two ladies who are just as good.
DiDonato’s voice has a masculine edge to it that makes
her idea for breeches roles like this. She turns Isolier, Ory’s
page and admirer of the Countess, into a believable, love-struck
boy and the sheer security of her tone is a marvel to behold.
She isn’t required to scale the heights like her colleagues,
but she is just as effective in her range as they are and it’s
a joy to see and hear her in what she does. Diana Damrau has
less form in the bel canto repertoire, but she takes
to the virtuoso role of the Countess like a duck to water. The
voice is rich and full at every level, for all the demands that
are placed upon it above the stave, and her entrance aria in
particular is outstanding. In the lesser roles, Stéphane
Degout plays Raimbaud as a loveable rogue, using his extremely
beautiful voice to make this roguish character actually rather
likeable. Michele Pertusi in the role of Ory’s tutor is
more cardboard, though his deep bass forms a good contrast to
the rest of the cast, as does the plummy alto of Susanne Resmark.
Bartlett Sher’s production is less fun, unfortunately.
Sher sets the scene in an 18th century theatre for
no good reason other than that it means he doesn’t have
to bother with cumbersome castle sets and interiors, something
he as good as admits in his backstage interview included as
an extra. This factor doesn’t get in the way too much,
though there is no shortage of dumb “stage hands”
lumbering across the set drawing attention to the mechanics,
but it adds nothing and all seems a bit unnecessary. Why not
just trust the text? The only part of his production that I
found actively unpleasant, however, was his staging of the delightful
final trio which he turns into a three-in-a-bed grope, distasteful
and unnecessary to me. The costumes are sumptuous, contrasting
with the often bare surroundings, but the hyperactive camera-work
becomes a bit off-putting after a while: in order to capture
the action as best they can for a live audience, the Met have
a myriad of cameras whizzing all over the proscenium. Too often
they can’t resist the temptation to show off what they
can do. Benini’s conducting is solid, but perhaps a little
too four-square for a light-hearted work like this, so that
sometimes the sheer frothy enjoyment of the work gets lost.
However, the orchestra plays very well for him.
Make no mistake, though, it is for Flórez, Damrau and
DiDonato that you should buy this set. Their performances alone
will give hours of pleasure.
Simon Thompson
see also review by Robert Farr
Count Ory - Juan Diego Flórez (tenor) 
0709599 [2 DVDs: 153:00] 