Rossini's "Le Comte Ory" Met Saturday Matinee Broadcast and High Definition Transmission on Saturday, April 9

St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Gioacchino Rossini’s Le Comte Ory on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 12 noon. Approximate running time 2 hours, 45 minutes.

The Met web site says:

Rossini’s vocally dazzling comedy soars with bel canto sensation Juan Diego Flórez in the title role of this Met premiere production. He vies with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, in the trouser role of Isolier, for the love of the lonely Countess Adèle, sung by soprano Diana Damrau. Bartlett Sher, director of the Met’s popular productions of Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Les Contes d’Hoffmann, describes the world of Le Comte Ory as, “a place where love is dangerous. People get hurt. That can be very funny and very painful. Rossini captures both -— with the most beautiful love music he ever wrote.”

The High Definition transmission of Le Comte Ory will be presented at AMC Esquire 7, 6706 Clayton Road; St. Louis Mills 18; 5555 Saint Louis Mills Boulevard; AMC Chesterfield 14, 3000 Chesterfield Mall; and AMC Showplace Edwardsville 13, 6333 Center Grove Road, Edwardsville, Illinois. Click here to buy tickets.

In an article titled "Whose Version of Rossini? Scholar Disagrees With the Met" in the April 8, 2011, New York Times, Anthony Tommasini reports on a controversy surrounding the new production of Le Comte Ory:

The scholar and editor Philip Gossett is an expert on early-19th-century Italian opera, particularly the works of Verdi and Rossini. So naturally, the Metropolitan Opera asked him to write program notes for its premiere production of Rossini’s penultimate opera and last comedy, Le Comte Ory, which will be carried live on Saturday in an HD transmission to movie theaters and on the Met’s radio network.

Mr. Gossett refused. He did not want to be associated with the Met production, and he has not been reticent about explaining why.

He strongly objected to the Met’s decision to use the standard edition of the opera, prepared by Eugène-Théodore Troupenas and published in 1828, the year Ory received its premiere at the Paris Opera. Mr. Gossett considers this a butchered edition, seemingly intended for a “provincial opera house that couldn’t perform the music Rossini wrote,” as he explained in an essay for Das Bärenreiter-Magazin.