La Sonnambula, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, November 2011

Bellini’s La Sonnambula, like Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix was regarded in nineteenth century Italy as a classical example of the pastoral genre, and oddly enough the heroine and her mother in these performances of Sonnambula feature the same singers as Covent Garden’s concert performance of Linda di Chamounix two years ago.

All ROH images Bill Cooper

Eglise Gutiérrez was the sleepwalking Amina, and Elizabeth Sikora sang beautifully as her mother Teresa. Ms Gutiérrez produced some lovely soft notes in this technically demanding role, and after a nervous start she warmed up during the evening and her ‘mad scene’ was superbly sung. This is after the second sleepwalking episode, when her beloved Elvino has rejected her and now intends to marry his former lover Lisa, thinking Amina has been unfaithful. The reverse is the case and it is Lisa who has paid court to the Count, but truth will out in the end and the excitable young lovers are reunited.

Amina at her wedding party in Act I

Spanish tenor Celso Albelo was terrific as Elvino, being on top form from beginning to end, and giving serious meaning to the term bel canto. And with Michele Pertusi singing superbly as Count Rodolfo, a role he has performed in many major opera houses, including the Met’s live relay in March 2009, this was a wonderful cast. Pertusi looked very much the part with his wonderful stage presence, and Elena Xanthoudakis was a wittily assertive Lisa. Her voice had a wonderful purity in the Proms this past summer as William Tell’s son Jemmy, and came over powerfully here as the hostess of the inn. Korean bass Jihoon Kim sang well as her new admirer, whose handsome smugness well deserved the shoe she threw at him, and I only wish it had gone through the air rather than along the floor.

Act II 'mad scene'

Sudden fits of temper are a useful feature of this production by Marco Arturo Marelli, and I loved the chair being thrown through the window by the furious Elvino. Glass shattered and the snow came in, but the warmth of Bellini’s score was well captured by Daniel Oren in the orchestra pit, and this revival, nine years after the production’s first performances is very welcome indeed.

Performances continue until November 18 — for details click here — and there is a BBC Radio 3 broadcast on Saturday, 19 November at 6pm.

Le Comte Ory, Metropolitan Opera, live cinema relay, April 2011

This uniquely Rossinian opera — his penultimate — is wonderful fun, and I’m delighted the Met has put it on, and done so in a cinema screening for the whole world to share. It’s not often performed because it needs three superb singers — in the roles of Count Ory, his page Isolier, and the Countess Adele — and the Met did us proud by having Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato, and Diana Damrau in these roles. The superb singing and acting from all three was a treat.

All photos: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

In its original form this was a one-act vaudeville production by Scribe and Delestre-Poirson, produced eight years previously, and they turned it into an opera for Rossini in 1828. The story is based on the exploits of the libidinous Count Ory, a medieval Don Juan who featured in a well-known Picardy legend. Ory and his page are both enamoured of the Countess Adèle whose husband has departed on one of the Crusades. In Act I, Ory disguises himself as a hermit whose religious virtue and ascetic background can help sad people, such as the lonely Countess, to regain their composure. He does this by telling her she needs a lover to give her a zest for life, and the page Isolier sees his chance. Ory soon dissuades the Countess from such a liaison by telling her the young man is page to the terrible Ory, but then he himself is unmasked by his tutor, who’s been searching for him, and the plan fails. But Ory is a man of ingenuity and in the second act he and his companions dress as nuns and gain entrance to the Countess’s home in the midst of a storm. Lots of fun, particularly in a bedroom scene with Ory, Isolier and the Countess all together in a bed. When the Crusaders return it’s all over.

Rossini’s music is partly adapted from his wonderful earlier creation Il Viaggio a Reims, a sort of cantata-opera written for the coronation of Charles X. It may lack the vitality and flow of L’Italiana or Il Barbieri, but as that great Rossini expert Francis Toye writes, “No score of his shows such elegance, such piquancy, such grace”.

The page and the Countess

The production by Bartlett Sher was set in the eighteenth century, with suitable stage props operated from the side by a master of ceremonies who tapped his stick to tell the orchestra when to start. His comings and goings started before the overture as he walked over the stage within the stage. The glorious costumes by Catherine Zuber came from several time periods, and those for the Countess were magnificent, well matched by Diana Damrau’s brilliantly assured singing of the role, particularly in the top range. As her amorously insistent lover, Juan Diego Flórez made a superb entrance as Ory, disguised as a hermit with an obviously fake beard. His presence was riveting, and in the interval conversation with Renee Fleming we learned that he’d been in attendance at home as his wife gave birth a mere half hour before the performance. Congratulations to the Met for magically transporting him, and presumably his dresser, to the theatre on time!

Ory and the Countess

The page is a trouser role, and though it’s not easy for a woman to appear as a young man, Joyce DiDonato’s performance was as good as it gets. She was utterly convincing, and this is a woman I’ve seen as Rosina in Il Barbieri looking the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen — even in a wheelchair, which she used at Covent Garden in July 2009 after a stage accident. Superlatives fail me.

These three principals were well aided by Stéphane Degout as Ory’s friend Raimbaud, Susanne Resmark as the Countess’s companion Ragonde, and Michele Pertusi as the tutor. Fine conducting by Maurizio Benini kept the singers together beautifully and the ensemble at the end of Act I was simply terrific. A better performance of Le Comte Ory is difficult to imagine, and I would love to see the Met do more Rossini in live screenings.

La Sonnambula, live cinema screening from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, March 2009

With Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez as the lovers Amina and Elvino, this promised to be a superb performance and it was. Their singing and their rapport with one another was a joy to behold, and with Jennifer Black singing beautifully as the jealous Lisa, and Michele Pertusi equally eloquent as Count Rodolfo, the whole thing went swimmingly, under excellent musical direction from Evelino Pido.

The production by Mary Zimmerman transposed the action into the modern world, but with a strange twist. It was all played as a rehearsal, with the setting for each scene written on a blackboard. The first sleepwalking scene, where Amina eventually reaches the Count’s room, started with her walking down one of the aisles in the audience. This worked well, and I liked the rehearsal aspect of the production. But what really counted was the orchestral playing and the singing, and this was as a good as it gets. Congratulations to the Met for another superb live cinema screening, with the intermission items well presented by Deborah Voigt.