New York opera has two faces: Met ‘Ory,’ NYCO ‘Monodramas’

You can’t judge an opera by its audience, but last week in New York, you could come pretty close. On Thursday night, the Metropolitan Opera’s first-ever production of Rossini’s rarely performed “Le Comte Ory” was sponsored by Yves Saint Laurent and ushered in on a glittering red carpet dotted with gowns and unlikely celebrities (Mary-Kate and Ashley?).

On Friday, New York City Opera, a company that was all but left for dead a couple of years ago after shutting down for a season for renovations and flirting with a general director it couldn’t afford, offered what in the opera world qualifies as breathtaking artistic daring: a triple bill of one-person works, called “Monodramas,” the most traditional of which was Arnold Schoenberg’s “Erwartung.” This was less an opera than a Happening, and the audience was less an opera audience than the new and different crowd (Jim Jarmusch!) that classical-music institutions are always saying they want.

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( Carol Rosegg / ) - “Neither,” the evocative, one-act opera now at New York City Opera, is the only libretto that playwright Samuel Beckett wrote.

The crowd is certainly an indicator of which event is more likely to interest you. Being catholic in my tastes, I was predisposed to be excited about both; thought both were generally quite good; but didn’t like either one quite as much as I had hoped.

Most exciting, to me, was the contrast: At a time when people are concerned about dwindling audi­ences, opera can generate excitement and buzz for completely different events.

It’s a challenge, though, to address both of these audiences in a single review. To holders of tickets to the live HD movie-theater broadcast of “Comte Ory” on April 9, I can say: Don’t worry, you’ll have a great time. “Ory” gathers three of the best current vocalists in opera: the ringing tenor Juan Diego Florez in the title role, the radiant soprano Diana Damrau as the chilly Countess Adele, and Joyce DiDonato, her voice shining and true, in the male role of Isolier, Ory’s page, who loves Adele himself. It’s Rossini’s penultimate opera, his final comedy, and features some of his most sparkling music (a lot of it lifted from “Il Viaggio a Reims,” an incidental work he wrote honoring the coronation of Charles X). This is opera on a very high level — even if the conductor, Maurizio Benini, was no more than adequate — and it’s probably going to come across wonderfully in HD.

Indeed, my biggest quibble on opening night lay in the singers’ reliance on nuances that will work just fine on a movie screen. Florez, playing a naughty count who spends half the first act disguised as a hermit and the second act as a nun (so he can get into Adele’s castle, and her pants), may have tried to suit his voice to his hermit’s disguise; his first aria sounded unexpectedly nasal and bleaty. Later in the opera he came into his own, throwing some nectary-sweet falsettos in for good measure. Damrau tweaked and fine-tuned every phrase, expertly; though she made some gorgeous sounds, I kept wanting her to stop fiddling so much and sing out.

The soprano Susanne Resmark, making her debut as the lady-in-waiting Ragonde, started uncertainly but turned out to have a big soprano voice anchored on a firm, rich, contralto-like base. The baritone Stephane Degout was another bright spot as one of Ory’s sidekicks. If Benini was weak (the ensemble at the end of Act 1 sounded rudderless) and Michele Pertusi, as Ory’s tutor, unimpressive, the opera was still a lot of fun; and the trio at the end of Act 2, sung by Florez, Damrau and DiDonato, all groping one another with adolescent vigor in a big bed, was a delight.