By Anthony Tommasini [NY Times, 25 March 2011]
When you consider how it came into being, “Le Comte Ory,” Rossini’s final comic opera, should have turned out a mess. It was a conflation of two completely different works: “Il Viaggio a Reims,” an operatic entertainment written by Rossini to celebrate the coronation of Charles X in France; and a one-act vaudeville play about the exploits of a libidinous young nobleman, Count Ory, and his band of knights, who weasel their way into a French convent during the Crusades.