HELLO! do you want to hear about my favorite opera a bunch? Yeah? good
what is le comte ory?
1828 comic opera in two acts, composed by gioachino rossini to a libretto by eugene scribe and charles-gaspard delestre-poirson (funny name i think). it has great music, great characters and some of the jokes are even funny. and it's so gender. however, there's no such thing as a perfect opera; this one, for instance, is french.
what's it about?
impersonating clergy. that's my summary. but this is what the lyric opera has to say:
In medieval France, the womanizing Count Ory is entranced by the beauty of Countess Adèle. But there's a huge obstacle in Ory's way: with Adèle's brother and the other menfolk away fighting a Crusade, Adèle and the ladies of her castle are adamantly resisting all male attention! In pursuing Adèle, Ory also has to fend with his own page, Isolier, who's totally infatuated with her. Ory disguises himself as a wise hermit so he can pretend to comfort the forlorn Adèle, but his true identity is soon revealed. He then manages to get himself and his cohorts into the castle, disguised as nuns. For Rossini's audience, the result of that trick is nonstop antics, culminating in a final trio both intoxicatingly beautiful and hilarious. (x)
what productions are there?
admire my beautiful beautiful hoard here (tumblr page, doesn't work well on mobile but it works). there are surprisingly many, considering this is one of rossini's lesser-performed operas. imo only two of them are truly good. four at most. but most of the others are still watchable!
only two of them are truly good?
video from the 1997 Glyndebourne Festival. subtitles by me, based on the castel word-by-word english translation of the libretto. Cast: Mar
melander might be my favorite countess of all time. she's an icon. if the video is laggy at any point that's my bad Deutsche Oper Berlin 19
yes.
