From Newsday, February 2004

For a company that has largely—and maddeningly—bypassed the Rossini Renaissance of the past generation, the Metropolitan Opera occasionally does dead right by the composer known as the "Swan of Pesaro." One such occasion was the 1975 production of his L'assedio di Corinto, which marked the Met debut of Beverly Sills. Another was the 1997 staging of his La Cenerentola for Cecilia Bartoli, and its revivals featuring the cream of today's staggering bounty of gifted Rossinian singers.

Despite its promise, and some wonderfully accomplished musical performances, this season's revival of L'Italiana in Algeri does not rank among these illustrious events. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1973 production, directed by David Kneuss, looks wan, larded with all manner of coarse and fussy attempts at humor: a turban kicked around like a soccer ball; shimmying bosoms and backsides, and manic choreography. It typifies the Met's condescending approach to Italian comic opera as seen in its production of Il barbiere di Siviglia, too often played for guffaws rather than as a nimble, sophisticated art form.

From a musical perspective, Rossini's tale of an Italian girl washed up on the shores of Algiers who takes charge of an overbearing Moorish suitor and sparring Latin lovers, remains close to shipshape. Performed in Azio Corghi's critical edition, the score gleams like a Michelangelo fresco scrubbed clean of centuries of soot.

James Levine and the Met orchestra offered a zestful reading of the overture, whose chirping winds and iridescent orchestration danced and whirled weightlessly. Levine's Rossini has something of the dry fizz of Claudio Abbado's masterful interpretations.

With tenor Juan Diego Flórez as Lindoro, Levine has a leading man who can negotiate Rossini's ornate lines as well as the virtuosos of the Met orchestra. High, fleet voices can enjoy cruelly short primes, but for now, at least, Flórez is beyond reproach. He looks every inch the impish, irresistible gallant, and caps cascades of runs with long, soft, exquisitely tapered notes. His comic patter is both understandable and sparkling with wit, and he makes flourishes tell of lovesickness, laughter or martial resolve. Maria Callas called the ornaments of bel canto "a vast language on its own," and no one today speaks that language more eloquently than Flórez.

Olga Borodina's Isabella is less consistently successful. She brings a faultless legato line to "Per lui che adoro," scaling down her lush mezzo to a breathtaking thread of sound in the aria's reprise, and she pops out bubbly, spot-on staccati in "O, che muso!"

At the moment, though, Borodina is no Rossinian. While her voice has the ideal weight and color for this wickedly long and difficult role, Levine sometimes slowed proceedings to a funereal pace Monday to accommodate her efforts to cope with the role's lavishly decorated lines. A deft comedian, Borodina needs to work on her lugubrious Italian, marred by Slavic-sounding vowels and garbled consonants.

As Mustafà, Ferruccio Furlanetto indulges in too much mugging and comes up short in his command of Rossini's fireworks. His blustery handling of fioritura is not up to snuff in an era when Michele Pertusi, Samuel Ramey and others can sing this intricately ornamented music with elegance and precision.

Mariusz Kwiecien's firm, beautifully produced baritone and stylish ways plead for meatier assignments than the captain Haly, and Earle Patriarco is sweetly sympathetic as Isabella's cuckolded admirer, Taddeo. Lyubov Petrova's luminous, penetrating voice brings sparkle to the part of Mustafà's long-suffering wife, Elvira, and Sandra Piques Eddy is luxuriously rich-toned as her slave, Zulma.

Monday's house was nearly full, belying the conventional wisdom that bel canto is a tough sell in New York. City Opera's upcoming production of Rossini's rarely done Ermione is already generating buzz. With regime change looming at the Met, given general manager Joseph Volpe's recent announcement that he would retire in 2006, and artist rosters groaning with dazzling Rossinians, perhaps New Yorkers can look forward to Guillaume Tell (not heard at the Met since 1931) or Le Comte Ory. The latter, with Flórez singing like a god, zipping around in a nun's habit and engaged in a ménage à trois, has had European audiences in a lather of lust in recent seasons.

Meanwhile, this flawed but enjoyable Italiana offers tantalizing glimpses of the splendors that could be in the bel canto backwater that is New York.