9 April 2011: Rossini, Le Comte Ory

Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Count Ory: Juan Diego Flórez; Countess Adèle: Diana Damrau; Isolier: Joyce DiDonato. Conductor: Maurizio Benini

A wonderful romp of a comic opera, in which Juan Diego Flórez masquerades as a nun (with a very noticeable five o’clock shadow), and ends up in bed with two women at the same time, to hilarious conclusions. Isolier is a trousers role, as the page of the Count, whose only object in life is to seduce the most beautiful women he comes into contact with. Isolier is in training for this sort of thing, and both receive in due course the tongue-in-cheek, lightly moralized, turn-about ending that is part of the frothy truth of comic opera ethos. Both are magnificently abetted in this by Rossinni’s magical music, played and sung at a pace that defies the workings of even the stoutest metronome.