By Anne Midgette [Washington Post, 26 March 2011]
A Rossini comedy is supposed to be a veritable orgy of whipped-cream fun for the ears, with vocal flourishes and trills piling atop each other, crowned with sustained high Cs and E-flats like glistening cherries. In evaluating the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Le Comte Ory” (Count Ory), a rarely-done piece that had its first-ever performance at the Met on Thursday night, it’s hard to know whether to praise the company for providing a very nice hot-fudge sundae, or to lament the fact that it didn’t offer an all-out banana split.