Rossini’s comedies are proving perfect tonics as lockdown eases. Hard on the heels of Glyndebourne’s marvellous Turco in Italia and the Grange festival’s La Cenerentola, we have Garsington Opera’s laugh-out-loud-funny new production of Le Comte Ory, directed by Cal McCrystal and conducted by Valentina Peleggi. First performed in Paris in 1828, it’s a gloriously ribald piece about a libidinous medieval aristocrat attempting to bed a group of would-be virtuous women while their menfolk are away at the Crusades, first by posing as a wonder-working hermit, then as the leader of a group of nuns, with his knights in tow in drag.
McCrystal stages it as a deliriously camp period musical, complete with show-stopping routines choreographed by Tim Claydon, though he brings his own anarchic humour to it. Jacques Imbrailo as Ory’s sidekick Raimbaud first pitches up dressed like Sylvester Stallone as Rambo. The Countess Adèle (Andrea Carroll) and her ladies seem to be in constant competition as to who has the biggest wimple, while the Witch from Disney’s Snow White is among the women vying for the attentions of Jack Swanson’s Ory in his hermit guise. Some of it is quite raunchy, and McCrystal comes up with a really clever bondage twist to the great troilistic trio – among the funniest things in Rossini’s output – between Adèle, Ory and the latter’s pageboy Isolier (Katie Bray).
It’s beautifully done, too. Swanson and Carroll, superb comic actors both, are spectacular in their set-piece arias, which are almost vertiginous in their difficulty. Bray makes a fine Isolier, knowing and spirited, while Imbrailo has tremendous fun with the big scene in which he and Ory’s nuns get drunk with the contents of Adèle’s wine cellar. Joshua Bloom is Ory’s worldweary Tutor, powerless to prevent his charge’s excesses, and the great Patricia Bardon is on terrific form as Adèle’s companion Ragonde. Peleggi conducts with marvellous flair and precision, and the choral singing is excellent: the men, liberated in drag, look as if they’re having the time of their lives.
At Garsington Opera, Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch, until 25 July.
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