Le Comte Ory, Garsington Opera, review ★★★★★

Garsington’s 5-star production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier has been paired with a new production of Rossini’s gorgeous comedy, Le Comte Ory, written for Paris in 1828. There are similarities.

As in Rosenkavalier, a young man – a trouser role sung by a mezzo in both operas – is infatuated with an older woman. Rossini's Comtesse Adèle tries to avoid the attentions of Comte Ory, a young roué who is almost as boorish in this production as Baron Ochs in Rosenkavalier. Both operas even have famous trios as their highpoints.

Set in a comedy version of the Middle Ages (vivid, over-the-top costumes by the designer takis), Adèle and her ladies have sworn to avoid male company until their husbands return from the Crusades, a vow they are starting to regret…

Men will stop at nothing in Le Comte Ory. Photo: Alice Pennefather

Le Comte Ory requires a stellar cast, and Garsington has assembled a first-rate cast of principals for whom Rossini’s challenging vocal writing holds no terrors, plus the full-throated Garsington Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra, all expertly marshalled by conductor Valentina Peleggi.

In the title rôle, the young American tenor Jack Swanson clearly shows why he is gaining a reputation as a Rossini specialist, easily mixing his head voice and chest voice to produce rapid-fire runs and endless brilliant top notes. As Comtesse Adèle, he is matched by fellow American, Andrea Carroll, who sings regularly at the Vienna State Opera and is set to make important debuts at La Scala and the Met.

Carroll is the sort of performer which only America seems to produce, formidably confident and able to sing stratospheric high notes while doing the splits. More importantly, she has an impeccable vocal technique and, unusually for a coloratura soprano, a beautifully rich lower register.

Playing Isolier, Comte Ory’s pageboy and the young man besotted with Adèle, Katie Bray produced perfect legato lines which showed why she had won the Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World in 2019.

Jack Swanson, putting on the agony in the title role of Le Comte Ory. Photo: Craig Fuller

The plot of Le Comte Ory is razor-thin. In Act One, Ory disguises himself as a hermit, hoping to get inside Adèle’s well-guarded castle. Isolier turns up to woo Adèle but fails to recognise his master in disguise (Swanson was wearing Groucho Marx glasses and a false nose). Everybody sings.

In Act Two, Ory and his men disguise themselves as nuns on pilgrimage and Adèle allows them into the castle to shelter from a sudden storm. Ory tries to seduce Adèle but, in the darkness of her room, succeeds only in kissing the hand of his pageboy. The return of the Crusaders is announced and Ory escapes. Everybody sings.

Razor-thin plot or not, if the director has so little confidence in the opera that he encourages the cast to send it up, the baby goes out with the bathwater. Cal McCrystal devised the physical comedy for the National Theatre’s production of One Man, Two Guvnors which doubtless helped to propel it to the West End and Broadway. Slapstick may work for an updated farce by Goldoni but quickly becomes tiresome when applied relentlessly, and from the outset, to an opera which is in turn charming, comic, tender and sexy.

The results were coarse and charmless. The Garsington audience returned from their interval picnics in high good spirits, ready to laugh at any opportunity but, as Act Two proceeded, a palpable gloom descended.

Katie Bray sings beautifully as pageboy Isolier. Photo: Julian Guidera

When Ory mistakes Isolier in the dark for Adèle, Rossini takes a few lines of text and spins them into a 10-minute trio as breathtakingly beautiful as the Rosenkavalier trio. During this, McCrystal imitated the Met’s production in 2011 and had a double-bed wheeled onto the stage. He then had the game Swanson strip to nothing but underpants while Adèle and Isolier tied him spread-eagled to the bed for some light S&M.

Even Peleggi could do little to restore the magic to this trio, given what was happening onstage. Worse still, the high-jinks of the male chorus disguised as nuns consisted mainly of them hitching up their robes at every opportunity to display yet more underpants. One of them, thanks to the wig department, even had luxuriant additional pubic hair added.

Despite the many indignities heaped upon these highly-trained young musicians, the Garsington Chorus produced a thrilling sound. I would willingly have heard them perform a whole evening of operatic choruses.

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Le Comte Ory is sung in French with English surtitles