‘What musical riches!’ exclaimed Berlioz when he first set eyes on Rossini’s last and most subtly wrought operatic comedy in Paris in 1828. Yet the comedy quickly found itself out of kilter with the taste of the times. ‘The delicious Il Conte Ory has, with all the beauty of its music, never been a favourite anywhere,’ noted an admiring and regretful Henry Chorley after seeing a bowdlerised Italian-language staging at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, in 1854.

It comes as no surprise, then, that this 2011 staging was the first in the Met’s 127-year history. It is said that the house had been waiting for a cast and a director to do it justice. The cast is certainly distinguished. Not since Juan Oncina at Glyndebourne in the 1950s has there been a singer better able to cope with the phallocentric Count’s stratospheric billings and cooings than Juan Diego Flórez. Diana Damrau, a coloratura possessed of breeding as well as presence, makes a superb Countess Adèle, and the irrepressible Joyce DiDonato gives a properly testosterone-fuelled performance of Ory’s promiscuous young page Isolier. All three sing the celebrated three-in-a-bed nocturnal trio ‘A la faveur de cette nuit obscure’ with the required raptness and allure. Benini directs the Met’s Rolls-Royce pit band with brisk efficiency.

Among the comprimario players, baritone Stéphane Degout is outstanding as Ory’s henchman Raimbaud. Rather heavier of touch and tone are Susanne Resmark’s Ragonde and Michele Pertusi’s Tutor. Glyndebourne used to cut the Tutor’s somewhat intrusive Act 1 aria. Few would dare do that now but director Gary Halvorson does Pertusi few favours by having the aria sung in front of an improvised curtain.

To give the production intimacy and point, Halvorson and his designer Michael Yeargan have created an 18th-century theatre within the ample spaces of the Metropolitan stage, complete with an old-fashioned prompter cranking the machinery. Catherine Zuber’s costumes, which cross the centuries from the medieval to the modern, are colourful and cleverly blended.

As to the actual playing of the stage action, here opinion is bound to be divided. Act 2, during which Ory and his men dress up as nuns, can, and generally does, get out hand. ‘Less is more,’ one is tempted to mutter as Flórez is filmed in close-up mugging to the gallery. But, then, that’s the problem with most live opera when it’s served up cold on the small screen. Best forget the divided loyalties of the medium and enjoy. As Ory and his men observe, ‘What an excellent piece of folly! It’s charming, it’s divine!’