New Zealand Opera offers a contemporary take on Rossini’s Le Comte Ory for its first mainstage production of 2024. Auguring well on the musical side was the return of the star duo of Emma Pearson and Hanna Hipp, so successful in the same company’s Cosi fan tutte last year. However, while the music-making was consistently accomplished, the direction occasionally prevented the innovative production from making its full effect.
In Le Comte Ory, Countess Adèle and her ladies have holed themselves up in her chateau to await the return of their warrior husbands from the Crusades. There they are vulnerable to the attentions of the titular Count Ory, who adopts disguises as both a hermit and a nun to try and gain access to – and thereby seduce – Adele. His page, Isolier, is a rival for the Countess’s affections and derails Ory’s seduction plans each time. Director Simon Phillips takes the opportunity to reshape the setting to modern-day New Zealand. The chateau becomes a wellness retreat at the well-known luxury Chateau Tongariro in the central North Island. Rather than knights on crusade, the absent men are turned into a rugby team off to dominate on the world stage. Their girlfriends and wives spend their time at the wellness retreat, pining for their sporting hero partners to return. Hanna Hipp’s dynamic Isolier is no trouser-role, but instead Ory’s very female physiotherapist who is in love with the Countess... and the feeling is mutual.
Conceptually, these changes do no harm; for the purposes of the plot, it matters little whether the women were noble ladies or football WAGs. Tracy Grant Lord's sets beautifully evoke the rural New Zealand train station where the hermit Ory dispenses his wisdom, and the luxurious interior of the “chateau”. If only the quality of the costumes had matched that of the sets – as it was, they looked rather cheap and took one out of the milieu. But, more problematically, Phillips' direction was somewhat helter-skelter, with the cast often asked to do a distracting amount of movement, such as the chorus awkwardly attempting yoga poses at the opening of the second act, or Ory having to continually interact with the crowd to an obsessive extent as he sings his first aria. These moments came across as more distracting than effective; the principals seemed uncomfortable three-in-a-bed, with their writhing much more awkward than titillating. The supertitles provided a cheeky and irreverent updated translation of the libretto, filled with modern New Zealand slang and heavy on innuendo, which garnered more laughs than the actual events on stage.
Luckily, the music-making, overall, was of a very high standard. Manase Latu is a sweet-voiced tenor, who made the greatest effect in slow music or cadential points when he could tease out a ravishing vocal line. He was less comfortable in the more outgoing music, with the higher reaches of his voice taking on a veiled quality rather than opening up freely. This role also requires a little more charisma to bring off, to make Ory seem like a genuine threat to the virtue of the Countess; here, he was played more as a clown which made his attempted seductions less credible. His duet with Adèle in his guise as a nun (“Ah, quel respect, madame”) was particularly lovely, enhanced by the production’s rare stillness at this point.
Emma Pearson had full measure of the chaste Adèle, with her elaborate first-act aria being a highlight for its seamless coloratura and sly characterisation. She was the most successful in acting out the director’s vision, though some of the dance movements were still a bit risible. She also blended well with the perky Isolier of Hipp, who lavished her warm mezzo tones in even Rossini’s fastest divisions. Special mention for Moses Mackay’s Raimbaud, who stole the limelight in almost every scene he was in, a naturally hilarious stage animal who was also able to create quite a tour de force moment out of his difficult patter aria. Conductor Brad Cohen kept the pace going with ample fizz and verve and a good handle on the Rossinian crescendo. This was a performance in which the audio component offered much to be savoured... even if sometimes it worked better with one’s eyes closed.
