Stunning Cinderella

Massenet’s late opera Cendrillon brings the Royal Opera’s low-key season to an effervescent if somewhat vapid close.

Massenet’s late opera Cendrillon brings the Royal Opera’s low-key season to an effervescent if somewhat vapid close. I doubt whether a better case could be made for it than in this production, imported from Santa Fe.

Laurent Pelly, an expert in contriving ingenious and non-stop action, keeps the first two acts, building up to Cinderella’s enforced departure from the ball, bowling along against an appealing background, designed by Barbara de Limburg, of wall-sized pages of Perrault’s tale, which slide away in favour of, usually, scarlet settings. There isn’t a lot of characterisation in the music, so it is achieved here mainly by blatant and often amusing sartorial means, with the two sisters parading in a series of stunning outfits that might have figured in a Fellini satire.

All the more impressive is Cendrillon’s dowdy dress and cardigan, which seem to express not only her downtrodden state, but also her tastefulness by contrast with her sisters, as well as a slight element of self-righteousness, as in Rossini’s much more comprehensive depiction of the same character. Everything about the central figure is illuminated by the stunning presence of Joyce DiDonato, who seems to have no limits to her capacity for expression through gesture and movement, while her fabulous vocal powers were only tested in a couple of high quiet notes. The most remarkable quality of this artist of genius may be the naturalness with which she does everything. I’m not sure that I have ever seen and heard a star before whose star quality is so paradoxically restrained.

Like all the greatest performers, DiDonato brings out the best in her colleagues, most emphatically in Alice Coote, who is her Prince Charmant.