(Photo Credit : ©Simon Gosselin)

Opéra de Nancy, in co-production with Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Opéra de Reims and Théâtre de Caen, presents Rossini’s “La Cenerentola.” A youthful opera – the composer was only twenty-five years old when he wrote it – this dramma giocoso is reminiscent of opera seria in its moral ending and, as is often the case with Mozart, with his profound lightness and symmetry, Rossini once again displays his charming mischievousness in virtuoso music that is fast-paced and full of bounce. It takes a great deal of mischief to recognize in Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella” tale the basic plot of an opera.

As is so often the case with Rossini, the orchestral music, as much as that of the singers, is lively, mischievous and colorful. It could even be said that the drama exists only for its sake, so impressive is its psychological and narrative leanness. Conductor Giulio Cilona conveys his fast-paced phrases very well, bringing the winds into dialogue with the strings. While he masters Rossini’s orchestral demands from a purely technical point of view, he seems not to have grasped what they convey. Rossini’s orchestra comments on the action with an amused, lively and witty tone, which it communicates to the listener. It is not just background music. The Belgian-American conductor lacks that little extra audacity to completely carry the audience away. However, he is one of the few pleasing elements of this production.

Production Details

It’s quite remarkable how Fabrice Murgia‘s staging aims to undermine opera, so much so that its ugliness, and even in places, its vulgarity dominates. At this point, as with Lydia Steier, one has to wonder whether the Belgian director isn’t using the stage against opera as an artistic genre, daubing the stage with dirty colors, dressing the performers in heavy costumes and ridiculing the characters.

The imagined scene, featuring a low-class hotel, in which Angelina (Cinderella) works as a maid and lodges under a grand staircase like Harry Potter is dominated by greenish and brownish tones. A bar on the left and a lobby on the right continue its off-screen space, with a large disc suspended above the bar serving as a screen for various projections. The cameramen surrounding the protagonists don’t quite seem to know what to film. The screen shows Angelina’s father, her sisters, Angelina, the conductor and the orchestra. The projectionist isn’t sure what to show either. He also shows images of the unfortunate woman’s guardhouse, archive footage and Angelina coming to the ball in the middle of it all. He doesn’t know where to project either. Sometimes the back of the stage is used as a screen in turn. Rarely has an installation like this been so muddled, so attention-grabbing, so random and useless. To top it all off, a slight discrepancy between the projection and the voices makes the whole mess even more ridiculous.

Then there are the costumes. Angelina and the prince, and subsequently all the courtly characters such as Dandini (his footman) and Alidoro (the chamberlain), are dressed in a genre mix of emo and gothic. Some of their clothes, especially their pants, are even ripped. Angelina also wears a studded dog collar, green hair and whitish make-up with black lipstick, while Don Ramiro (the prince), with the same make-up as his beloved, wears black latex clothes reminiscent of “Edward Scissorhands.” Angelina’s teenage bimbo sisters wear boots with inch-high soles and heels, floral socks, and during the ball, one of them dons a form-fitting red latex jumpsuit to look like a she-devil. Don Magnifico (the father), a caricature of the redneck, wears a “Make opera great again” cap, tracksuits and a mustache drooping to the corners of his mouth.

The worst is undoubtedly Hungarian baritone Gyula Nagy as Don Magnifico, so caricatured and crude as to be embarrassing, as when he dances while Angelina sings, or collapses drunk in front of the chorus. But valet Dandini as a pizza delivery boy to test the Magnifico girls’ generosity isn’t bad either. Or Alidoro, who emerges from under the table to address Don Romiro. Or Don Romiro, who starts by tasting a brown puddle on the floor. The direction of the actors constantly ridicules the characters, and in so doing also obscures the opera-fairy tale.

The aesthetic comes to a climax during the ball in the third act. Costumes and decor are inspired by horror films, but then in all directions. From Don Ramiro’s “Frankenstein” head to the zombie chorus, even after the ball, from the sisters bound together by their faces like the twin cenobites of “Hellraiser,” to the jars on the sides of “Frankenstein Junior,” and even Angelina’s Dracula-like dress. Everything is done without explaining the relationship between horror films and this fairy tale-dramma giocoso, and above all without finesse, explanation or anything other than forced humor. The staging is even more insistent than the libretto’s length.

Last but not least, the vocal line-up is highly disparate. Soprano Héloïse Poulet and mezzo-soprano Alix Le Saux as the Magnifico sisters maintain great clarity and flawless articulation throughout the opera, as they do during their first and last duets. Mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor as Angelina sings with round and voluptuous bel canto phrasing. Her “Una volta c’ era un re” is charming, but the same cannot be said of the singers. Only Italian tenor Dave Monaco‘s light, fresh and expressive bel canto as Don Ramiro, and his arias such as “Quell’ accento,” and straightforward recitatives such as the one in which he stands up to his future father-in-law, are natural in their delivery.

Although Italian baritone Alessio Arduini possesses a strong, serene timbre, he fails to be overly appealing, and bass-baritone Sam Carl as Alidoro maintains an interesting timbre but, unfortunately, no real sparkle. The aria in which Alidoro presents his dress to Angelina, instead of taking her away, stretches out and Dandini’s first aria in Act one seems contrived. Gyula Nagy, despite his many arias, fails to lift his singing out of the ridiculousness of his role. He remains mired in it to the very end. The opera’s chorus, usually so firm and confident, no doubt embarrassed by its zombie-like slouching, seems limp and anecdotal here.