Transgressive Theatre-Opera presents Count Ory

The plot of Rossini’s comedy Count Ory (Le comte ory) is pure opera buffa. The titular count, a notorious libertine and scoundrel, and his crew of n’er-do-wells spend most of the opera trying to take advantage of the fact that most of the men in their area are away at war, leaving the ladies alone and, presumably, lonely for male company. He meets his match in the clever Countess Adele and the ladies in her castle, who rebuff his advances and outsmart him at every turn. Tenor Max Hosmer is the Count, with mezzo-soprano Brittany Jeffries, last season’s Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, as his erstwhile page Isolier. Baritone Noah Gartner, Guglielmo in 2018’s Cosi, and bass Kota Terrace round out the Count’s posse, as his drinking buddy Raimbaud and his long-suffering tutor respectively. TT-O favorite, soprano Mary Lutz-Govertsen, is Countess Adele, and Angela Torres is her confidante Ragonde. Elizabeth Rudolph sings the role of Alice. TT-O will examine what the piece might have been if Rossini composed within the opera comique-genre that his opening night audience was expecting, which negatively affected its initial reception. Some of the grandest musical moments will be pared back (but all of the most famous sections left intact), and while the opera will be sung in French (with English subtitles) the recitatives will be re-created as dialogue, and spoken in English. A secondary love-couple will be added, Jacqueline and Jack, who will sing duets interpolated from other, lesser-known Rossini operas. Soprano Teaira Burge and tenor Alex Carey essay these new characters, involved in a more traditionally recognizable lyric theatre-relationship.

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