Stream: Glyndebourne - La Cenerentola
Glyndebourne Opera’s stream of their 2005 ‘Cenerentola’ is available free over the Christmas period. I saw this production at the Festival Theatre in December 2005, and fifteen years on, it’s still well worth seeing, musically excellent, with a fine cast conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, and outstandingly well-directed by Peter Hall. There is concern for detail in the precision of the singing and the orchestration, (watch Jurowski’s conducting in the overture) and in the focus on the meaning of the words. Jurowski and Hall both show an admirable willingness to take this comedy seriously. Much of it is funny, but the characters are never treated as caricatures: each of them, whatever his or her foibles, is a real person.
Take for example, Cenerentola’s father, Don Magnifico, played here (and in Edinburgh) by Luciano di Pasquale. Grossly fat, with dishevelled hair and worn out clothes, he seems a typically absurd buffo character. Yet Di Pasquale (then considerably younger than the monster he portrayed) shows Magnifico’s determination to rise from straitened circumstances back to his rightful place in society. How? By making sure one of his daughters marries the prince. To this end he’s sycophantic to Dandini (in disguise as the prince), but bullying, physically as well as emotionally to his own daughters, Clarinda and Tisbe. It’s all there in the libretto, as is his even more over-the-top cruelty to his step-daughter, Angelina, when he takes up a stick to threaten her with death if she does not get herself out of sight of the prince. It’s terrifically well-sung – every note and word of the patter songs are in place – and horrifying to watch, but we understand the desperation that makes him do it.
The production looks good too. Magnifico’s house is shabby without the chic, with tattered furnishings and old crockery. The costumes are muted in shades of brown and cream. Angelina does look as if she’s had to sleep in the cinders. The stepsisters, slovenly in their deshabille at the beginning, scrub up surprisingly well for the ball, and aren’t dressed in pantomime garb. They’re frightened of their father, and nasty to Angelina and to each other. Hall’s production shows how envious they are of her success in marrying the prince – and to accept her forgiveness for their ill-treatment.
Kindness – ‘bonta’ - as the libretto frequently reminds us is the theme of this opera. This is not a quality which comes easily. Angelina is no martyr, she’s angry at her lot, and carries out her tasks with sighs and an ill-grace. (The Norwegian mezzo, Tuva Semminsen, who sang the role in Edinburgh, was wonderfully ill-tempered!). But she’s kind to the beggar (the prince’s tutor in disguise) and is rewarded when caught unawares by the prince (also in disguise, as his equerry) and they fall instantly in love. Ruxandra Dunose and Russian tenor, Maxim Mironov (only 24 at the time of this performance) are ideally cast. They sing beautifully, Mironov with an effortless command of his high notes in his difficult second-act aria, and entirely convincing as the lovers.
Their meeting is a pivotal moment of the opera. They are gauche with each other in halting conversation, but each is utterly confident in new-found love, eloquently expressed in soliloquies addressed to the audience. The ability to communicate the character’s thoughts, separately, but often simultaneously, is a feature of this opera. In this Act I duet it’s simple and joyous, but later in two sextets Rossini uses these simultaneous monologues to indicate the characters’ inner turmoil.
Kindness requires inner change. Angelina realises this when the tutor tells her she shall go to the ball. By the end of Act I, all the characters are – literally – floored when they try to understand what her transformation may mean for them Non-naturalistic effects are used sparingly in this production, but here, the cast fall to their knees and crawl toward the front of the stage, clinging to each other in the darkness, “a fire is smouldering underground,” they sing, “and an earthquake may strike.”
Imagery of fierce natural events continues in the second act, and then, the following morning, a real thunderstorm (which frightens Magnifico and his daughters so much they hide under the table) causes the prince’s carriage to lose a wheel right outside the house. He finds his bride inside, by matching, not a lost shoe but a bracelet.
Rossini doesn’t give us a quick and easy ending after that. Ramiro has found the woman he loves, but how well does he know her? Angelina insists on showing kindness to her family. Ramiro isn’t keen, and the family are resentful, but splendidly she prevails in the opera’s final aria, ‘Nacqui all’affanno’, a mezzo tour-de-force.
As it was in the Festival Theatre in 2005, ‘La Cenerentola’ has been a festive treat for Christmas. It’s available free on YouTube until 4th January. Highly recommended.
