The Catskill Chronicle

Review by Barry Plaxen, Photographs © Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

LOCH SHELDRAKE, NY (April 21, 2011) – Giacchino Rossini wrote his French opera “Le Comte Ory” in 1828. Some of the music was taken from his 1825 Italian opera, “Il Viaggio a Reims,” which was composed specifically for the coronation of Charles X and was supposedly no longer relevant in 1828. It was shown as part of the Live from the Met in HD Series at Sullivan County Community College in Loch Sheldrake on April 9, 2011.

The libretto is by Augustin Eugène Scribe (1791 –1861), a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the

perfection of the so-called “well-made play” (pièce bien faite). This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years, from Ibsen and Chekhov to Shaw, O’Casey, Miller, Hellman, Williams and August Wilson.

Well-made? Not this opera.

This work is a farce, the story of a rakish Count trying to seduce a noble woman while her protective-brother and all her ladies-in-waiting husbands are off to the Crusades to kill all the Saracen infidels.

Yes, I said a farce.

The Count dons disguises – religious hermit and nun. But for 2011 the farcical elements are extremely hackneyed. In trying to un-hackney it, director Bartlett Sher has added a menage-a-trois element in the last act which totally goes

against the libretto, thereby making the addition, and hence the mistaken identity scene in which it takes place, unfunny.

One suspects that it was done for shock value and to entice younger audiences, who are used to somewhat explicit sex in current films, to watch opera. If that is not so, one wonders why it was allowed to remain in the production. The actors do their best trying to make the dramatic elements funny, but they are working with a dated Bel Canto libretto.

However, as Bel Canto singers, they do succeed tremendously.

The three protagonists were superb. “Rossini tenor” Juan Diego Florez as the cross-dressing seducing Count, soprano Diana Damrau as Adele – the object of his affection, and mezzo Joyce DiDonato as the Count’s page, who is in love with Adele. Their facile coloratura work, their remarkable phrasing and their expressive musicality helped to make the opera palatable as a musical Bel Canto work even though it does not rank with the best of Rossini’s comedies.

Other than singing-actor Stephane Degout as the Count’s friend Rimbaud, nothing much else stood out in the production except the costumes by Catherine Zuber, scores of wonderfully creative and visually pleasing medieval French upper class-rural garb.

Conductor Maurizio Benini and the Met orchestra supported the singers as well as they could in this uninspired farce.

The next Live from the Met in HD “livecast” is “Capriccio” by Richard Strauss starring Renee Fleming, April 23 at 1:00pm. For reservations: 845-434-5750, ext. 4472.