Reviewed by James Karas
The Royal Danish Opera gives Rossini’s La Cenerentola a production that is a pure joy to see and hear. It is sung beautifully, and Director Stefan Herheim invests the production with imaginative comic business that makes your head spin. From the start where we see an “angel” in a cloud over Cinderella who is mopping a floor with her cleaning cart beside her to the end when the guardian angel appears again, we go from one delightful prank to the next non-stop.
La Cenerentola was Rossini’s 19th opera, and he wrote it in a leisurely 25 days in January 1817 just in time for its premiere at the Teatro Valle in Rome. It was a bit of a rush job for librettist Jacopo Ferretti who had to grab some material from Charles Perrault, Charles Guillaume Etienne and Francesco Fiorini but when you have one month from the decision to write an opera based on the Cinderella story to opening night, you have to take some short-cuts. The librettist was not the only one who got help from others. Rossini hired a collaborator who put together the recitatives and composed some arias.
Mezzo soprano Josy Santos makes an outstanding Cinderella. She has a gorgeous voice and handles the trills and arching phrases with uncommon beauty. She is young and lissome and moves like a dancer. This Cinderella may be mistreated by her stepsisters, but she gives almost as much as she gets. She shows an independent and strong spirit with them and with Prince Don Ramiro and gives an overall superb performance.
Tenor Matteo Macchioni is an energetic Prince Don Ramiro with vocal authority and beauty in his middle and high notes. His trills are not there but he chooses not to try doing them all. A fine performance.
Tomi Punkeri enjoys being the double of the Prince and having people cow-tow to him in his role. He gives a versatile comic acting performance and superb singing.
Miklos Sebestyen gets the juicy role of Don Magnifico, the ambitious father of Cinderella’s nasty half-sisters and the clown of the opera. He generates the laughs assigned to him and sings with enthusiasm all the time.
Tae Jeong Hwang does yeoman service as Alidoro. He is the angel, the beggar and the wise advisor to the Prince and does a good vocal and acting job in all those roles.
Clara Cecille Thomsen as Clorinda and Kari Dahl Nielsen as Tisbe ably represent the nasty and ugly stepsisters. I hasten to add that they perform with vocal and comic verve and the adjectives used about the stepsisters do not apply to the performers of the roles.
The chorus sings of course but some of them don wings and become angels and go through the audience to great approval and applause.
Again, I want to give full marks to Herheim’s imaginative, touching and hilarious directing, his continuous inventiveness and the sheer joy that he gives us in the auditorium from beginning to end.
In this version of the fairy tale, there is no glass slipper and no horse-drawn carriage. At least not according to the libretto. Herheim and Designer Steven Anthony Whiting produce four miniature plastic horses that appear and Cinderella’s cleaning cart is converted into a carriage, and she is transported to the palace in comic style.
The set is imaginative but not ostentatious and it does the job. the changes between the Palace, the house of Don Magnifico, the appearance of the angel, the trip with the horse-drawn carriage are all done with speed and comic touches. Esther Bialas gets kudos for costume design.
Even Conductor Steven Moore is mobilized to appear on stage as an unknown “extra” wearing a silly wig. He is “uncovered” and sent back to the orchestra pit but not before instigating a gale of laugher and using the opportunity to elicit well-deserved applause for the musicians. The applause applied just as much to him for his vivacious conducting.
A fabulous night at the opera.
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La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini continues until October 26, 2022 at the Danish Royal Opera House, Ekvipagemestervej 10, 1438 København K, Denmark. https://kglteater.dk/det-sker/sason-20222023/opera/askepot/
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