Rossini Le Comte Ory
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Gioachino Rossini
Genre:
Opera
Label: Philips
Magazine Review Date: 10/1989
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 132
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 422 406-2PH2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (Le) Comte Ory |
Gioachino Rossini, Composer
Diana Montague, Isolier, Mezzo soprano Francis Dudziak, Nobleman I, Tenor Gilles Cachemaille, Gouverneur, Baritone Gino Quilico, Raimbaud, Baritone Gioachino Rossini, Composer John Aler, Comte Ory, Tenor John Eliot Gardiner, Conductor Lyon Opera Chorus Lyon Opera Orchestra Maryse Castets, Alice, Soprano Nicolas Rivenq, Nobleman II, Tenor Raquel Pierotti, Ragonde, Mezzo soprano Sumi Jo, Adele, Soprano |
Composer or Director: Gioachino Rossini
Genre:
Opera
Label: Philips
Magazine Review Date: 10/1989
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 422 406-4PH2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (Le) Comte Ory |
Gioachino Rossini, Composer
Diana Montague, Isolier, Mezzo soprano Francis Dudziak, Nobleman I, Tenor Gilles Cachemaille, Gouverneur, Baritone Gino Quilico, Raimbaud, Baritone Gioachino Rossini, Composer John Aler, Comte Ory, Tenor John Eliot Gardiner, Conductor Lyon Opera Chorus Lyon Opera Orchestra Maryse Castets, Alice, Soprano Nicolas Rivenq, Nobleman II, Tenor Raquel Pierotti, Ragonde, Mezzo soprano Sumi Jo, Adele, Soprano |
Author: Richard Osborne
The last decent studio recording we had of this vintage, late-grown Rossinian opera-comique was in July 1957. The cover of Gramophone that month was apple green with EMI using a fine aerial shot of the Glyndebourne house and gardens to advertise the arrival on record of Carl Ebert's 1955 production of Le Comte Ory beguilingly conducted by Vittorio Gui and sung in the original French by a cast that included Juan Oncina as the libidinous Comte and Sara Barabas as the Comtesse Adele. The original LPs have long since gone, but EMI kept the set in their catalogue in an intermittent sort of way over the years: long enough, it seems, to deter any kind of rival, so that Le Comte Ory has become even more the connoisseur's piece and almost as rare a recorded experience as, say, Reynaldo Hahn's Ciboulette.
Last year, Harmonia Mundi released on CD Le Chant du Monde's transcription of mono tapes of a live 1959 French Radio production conducted with flair and coltish abandon by the veteran Desire-Emile Inghelbrecht. I seem to recall Digby Anderson nominating 1962 as the year the Old France ceased to exist, the last date at which everything from lavatories, cars, and churches to corduroy trousers and cigarettes made with paper mais looked and smelt different, and this Inghelbrecht recording comes into that category. Despite cuts and acerbic studio sound; and despite, perhaps even because of, a certain nasal narrowing in the tones of Francoise Ogeas's Comtesse, it is a set that the late Philip Hope-Wallace might have swooned to hear, not least for Michel Senechal's inimitably projected Ory.
The new Ory, which for better or worse is probably going to be the chosen library version for some time to come, arrives with some Gallic trappings: a French orchestra and chorus and some French singers in the comprimario roles. Yet, for all his Gallic airs these days, it is difficult to forget that John Eliot Gardiner is an Englishman and a Handelian at that (not necessarily a bad thing, I hear Rossini murmuring from the depths of Santa Croce) and that the present cast is headed by an American Ory, a Korean Comtesse, and a British Isolier. In the event, the principals are little affected by this. Diana Montagu's Isolier is a bright sparkling jewel of a performance that is a considerable advance on the Isolier of Glyndebourne's young Dutch mezzo, Cora Canne-Meijer. And Sumi Jo's Comtesse is a joy, too, fetching, dramatic and vocally expert. Good as Barabas was on the Glyndebourne set, she occasionally had to funk or duck some of Rossini's sudden vocal flourishes—towards the end of the opera's penultimate number, for example—and she had less in reserve dramatically. In Act 1 Sumi Jo is all aerial brilliance, singing with that polished insouciance that so recently captivated the late Herbert von Karajan. And yet in the Act 2 denouement, Jo brings a steely glint to her tone that leaves Ory, his fortunes sinking as fast as the vocal tessitura, in no doubt about who is the victor and who the vanquished.
John Aler, too, is an accomplished Ory, not a French Ory in the way Senechal naturally is, nor an Ory with the vocal allure and sly grace of Glyndebourne's Juan Oncina. The sound is darker, more back-of-the-throat less tip-of-the-tongue, than Oncina's and there are fewer sweet elisions of rhythm and phrase than Oncina, with Gui's help, was able to give us, let alone something like the roguish lift on the final word of the response in Act 2, ''C'est le repas d'innocence, mesdames!'', when Ory and his roistering gang are disguised as nuns. But Aler's is a strongly projected account of the role, ably sung. Indeed, what Gardiner and his team invariably achieve is a strong sense of dramatic actuality. The Act 1 duet between Ory and Isolier, uncut and thus running to nearly twice the length of the Glyndebourne version, is a particular case in point and there are many moments, such as the Comte's re-entry near the end of Act 1 or his final submission in Act 2, where everything is immensely vivid and robust.
There is also a strong Gouverneur from Gille Cachemaille. He has the makings of a low trill, and he retains his Act 1 aria, which Ian Wallace was denied on the Glyndebourne set. This is no huge gain to one's general enjoyment of the opera; but Philips's opening up of the numerous niggling and not-so-niggling cuts is, by and large, a bonus. On the Glyndebourne recording one missed a verse in the early part of the great drinking scene, not to mention the concluding recitative and stretta of the opera's first scene, and the dramatic recitatives that lead to the Act 2 Trio, the latter a noticeably damaging cut.
Gardiner's management of the vocal ensembles, including the unaccompanied septet, is technically first rate, with a well-balanced vocal team; and the chorus work is also strikingly robust. That said, his feel for the score—for its grace, irony, wit, and humour—seems to me distinctly limited. The little Overture which so outraged Berlioz is played by Gui as a beguiling game of musical hide-and-seek, amusingly conspiratorial. Gardiner is deadpan and rather quick, advancing purposefully to the marching 2/4 section. And as the Act gets underway it is clear that there are times when we are being offered speed or a kind of motorized energy with barely a scintilla of the buoyancy and wit of Gui. At times the music is so forcefully directed, the seams begin to show, tub-thumping tonic and dominant cadences that a gentler interpreter would shade urbanely away. At times, the French wind playing is marvellous, full of brilliance and acerbic humour but in something like the famous song of the cellar in Act 2 it is not only Gino Quilico's rather pallid and unconfident patter that disappoints; the orchestral accompaniment itself has too little mordancy and point. Nor is Gardiner much of a colourist. In the preface to the great Act 2 Trio one longs for just one bar to be played with the ear of a real master, a Monteux, a Munch or Gui himself. But Gardiner is very much a conluctor of his era and place. It is all part of the new order, borne in by the zealots of authenticity, and we must put up with it, even if in the process we are denied a good deal of the spirit of wry, smiling, sweet-sounding Francophiliac Rossini.
The set includes an excellent essay by Philip Gossett on the opera itself and its world of disguises and masquerades. The recording could have been even more tightly edited. At end-of-section rests or fermatas it is often a matter of a second or so, or less, but there is a tendency not to bother with such niceties, which is unfortunate when a longish gap highlights evidence of a separate take. Balances between voices and orchestra have generally been astutely judged but there are some variations in balance and there are times when Lawrence Collingwood's 1956 EMI mono production was at once subtler and more immediately relevant in its 'placing' of a voice. Le Comte Ory is an opera where the Comte and his accomplices are much given to sly asides and subversive comments and this is something the old set often dealt with astonishingly well. EMI should certainly consider its reissue on CD. Meanwhile the new set, though it is unlikely to displace the Gui in the affections of old Rossini hands, will give considerable pleasure to anyone who has yet to discover the inexhaustible delights afforded by this delectable score.'
Last year, Harmonia Mundi released on CD Le Chant du Monde's transcription of mono tapes of a live 1959 French Radio production conducted with flair and coltish abandon by the veteran Desire-Emile Inghelbrecht. I seem to recall Digby Anderson nominating 1962 as the year the Old France ceased to exist, the last date at which everything from lavatories, cars, and churches to corduroy trousers and cigarettes made with paper mais looked and smelt different, and this Inghelbrecht recording comes into that category. Despite cuts and acerbic studio sound; and despite, perhaps even because of, a certain nasal narrowing in the tones of Francoise Ogeas's Comtesse, it is a set that the late Philip Hope-Wallace might have swooned to hear, not least for Michel Senechal's inimitably projected Ory.
The new Ory, which for better or worse is probably going to be the chosen library version for some time to come, arrives with some Gallic trappings: a French orchestra and chorus and some French singers in the comprimario roles. Yet, for all his Gallic airs these days, it is difficult to forget that John Eliot Gardiner is an Englishman and a Handelian at that (not necessarily a bad thing, I hear Rossini murmuring from the depths of Santa Croce) and that the present cast is headed by an American Ory, a Korean Comtesse, and a British Isolier. In the event, the principals are little affected by this. Diana Montagu's Isolier is a bright sparkling jewel of a performance that is a considerable advance on the Isolier of Glyndebourne's young Dutch mezzo, Cora Canne-Meijer. And Sumi Jo's Comtesse is a joy, too, fetching, dramatic and vocally expert. Good as Barabas was on the Glyndebourne set, she occasionally had to funk or duck some of Rossini's sudden vocal flourishes—towards the end of the opera's penultimate number, for example—and she had less in reserve dramatically. In Act 1 Sumi Jo is all aerial brilliance, singing with that polished insouciance that so recently captivated the late Herbert von Karajan. And yet in the Act 2 denouement, Jo brings a steely glint to her tone that leaves Ory, his fortunes sinking as fast as the vocal tessitura, in no doubt about who is the victor and who the vanquished.
John Aler, too, is an accomplished Ory, not a French Ory in the way Senechal naturally is, nor an Ory with the vocal allure and sly grace of Glyndebourne's Juan Oncina. The sound is darker, more back-of-the-throat less tip-of-the-tongue, than Oncina's and there are fewer sweet elisions of rhythm and phrase than Oncina, with Gui's help, was able to give us, let alone something like the roguish lift on the final word of the response in Act 2, ''C'est le repas d'innocence, mesdames!'', when Ory and his roistering gang are disguised as nuns. But Aler's is a strongly projected account of the role, ably sung. Indeed, what Gardiner and his team invariably achieve is a strong sense of dramatic actuality. The Act 1 duet between Ory and Isolier, uncut and thus running to nearly twice the length of the Glyndebourne version, is a particular case in point and there are many moments, such as the Comte's re-entry near the end of Act 1 or his final submission in Act 2, where everything is immensely vivid and robust.
There is also a strong Gouverneur from Gille Cachemaille. He has the makings of a low trill, and he retains his Act 1 aria, which Ian Wallace was denied on the Glyndebourne set. This is no huge gain to one's general enjoyment of the opera; but Philips's opening up of the numerous niggling and not-so-niggling cuts is, by and large, a bonus. On the Glyndebourne recording one missed a verse in the early part of the great drinking scene, not to mention the concluding recitative and stretta of the opera's first scene, and the dramatic recitatives that lead to the Act 2 Trio, the latter a noticeably damaging cut.
Gardiner's management of the vocal ensembles, including the unaccompanied septet, is technically first rate, with a well-balanced vocal team; and the chorus work is also strikingly robust. That said, his feel for the score—for its grace, irony, wit, and humour—seems to me distinctly limited. The little Overture which so outraged Berlioz is played by Gui as a beguiling game of musical hide-and-seek, amusingly conspiratorial. Gardiner is deadpan and rather quick, advancing purposefully to the marching 2/4 section. And as the Act gets underway it is clear that there are times when we are being offered speed or a kind of motorized energy with barely a scintilla of the buoyancy and wit of Gui. At times the music is so forcefully directed, the seams begin to show, tub-thumping tonic and dominant cadences that a gentler interpreter would shade urbanely away. At times, the French wind playing is marvellous, full of brilliance and acerbic humour but in something like the famous song of the cellar in Act 2 it is not only Gino Quilico's rather pallid and unconfident patter that disappoints; the orchestral accompaniment itself has too little mordancy and point. Nor is Gardiner much of a colourist. In the preface to the great Act 2 Trio one longs for just one bar to be played with the ear of a real master, a Monteux, a Munch or Gui himself. But Gardiner is very much a conluctor of his era and place. It is all part of the new order, borne in by the zealots of authenticity, and we must put up with it, even if in the process we are denied a good deal of the spirit of wry, smiling, sweet-sounding Francophiliac Rossini.
The set includes an excellent essay by Philip Gossett on the opera itself and its world of disguises and masquerades. The recording could have been even more tightly edited. At end-of-section rests or fermatas it is often a matter of a second or so, or less, but there is a tendency not to bother with such niceties, which is unfortunate when a longish gap highlights evidence of a separate take. Balances between voices and orchestra have generally been astutely judged but there are some variations in balance and there are times when Lawrence Collingwood's 1956 EMI mono production was at once subtler and more immediately relevant in its 'placing' of a voice. Le Comte Ory is an opera where the Comte and his accomplices are much given to sly asides and subversive comments and this is something the old set often dealt with astonishingly well. EMI should certainly consider its reissue on CD. Meanwhile the new set, though it is unlikely to displace the Gui in the affections of old Rossini hands, will give considerable pleasure to anyone who has yet to discover the inexhaustible delights afforded by this delectable score.'
Rossini Le Comte Ory
Rossini Le Comte Ory
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