This is Rossini's penultimate opera, followed only by Guillaume Tell with its famous overture. This 2011 production was its Met debut, however. "One of the reasons it took so long to get here is that you need to assemble three bel canto virtuosos," Renée Fleming claims in the introduction. Two things: first, you don't need to make excuses, I'm not mad at you over this; but second: if you're goingto make excuses, try to make less lame ones. I don't for a moment believe that there was a single period in the Met's history in which they couldn't have mustered the necessary cast had they wanted to. Sheesh.
Anyway. Most of the men are off at the wars, so the lecherous goofball Ory is trying to take advantage of the wimmenfolk left behind, mainly via goofy costumes: first as a wise hermit and then as a nun. He has his eye especially on a comtesse, Adèle, with whom his page Isolier is smitten. Everything works out for them. Ory doesn't get anything he wanted. The end.
Ory is clearly comparable to Don Giovanni, but with a difference: while you can easily picture the Don trying any of the shenanigans that Ory does, if he did, they would actually work, or at any rate seriously threaten to. But this just isn't that kind of opera, and Ory, while similar in very broad outline, doesn't get to be powerful or menacing--which is why he's able to come across as at least semi-sympathetic. Actually, the most dubious thing about this opera is the fact that the "wars" the men are off at are actually the Crusades. At the end of the first act, we learn that they're coming back. "We have liberated the Holy Land," their message says. "Our swords drip with Saracen blood," to which I can only say YIKES. But it's not a big enough part of the opera that it detracts from one's enjoyment, of which there is a lot. I'm not going to sit here and tell you this is quite on the same level of Barbierior indeed Cenerentola, but it's a lot of fun.
This is a sort-of meta-production, set on what's supposed to be a period stage on the regular stage itself. As these things go, this is a lot better than Sonnambulawith opera singers in contemporary New York; it doesn't detract from anything. But it definitely does make you wonder: okay, but what's the point? Why is this? Cast is great; of the main characters, Ory probably actually makes the least impression, though Juan Diego Florez is solid as ever (it seems his first child was born less than an hour prior to this Live in HD production, which certainly must have had some impact on his performance). Joyce Didonato is really fantastic en travesti as Isolier. As far as women playing men go, I don't think I've seen better (well, Isabelle Leonard as Cherubino might have been comparable). The character's really appealing and she's really convincing. But the biggest prize has to go to Diana Damrau as the Comtesse. She's great and hilarious in the role; I've long had issues with Damrau, but full credit: she knocked it out of the park with this melodramatic, somewhat dippy noblewoman.
Is this opera a bit slight? Yeah, probably; but whatever. It's still a winner. There's no reason not to see it.
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