‘Cendrillon’: A new design on an old fairy tale
By Peter Jacobi
February 1, 2009
Among the “in excess of 100” productions C. David Higgins says he’s designed for IU’s Opera and Ballet Theaters are two inspired by the fairy tale of Cinderella, those for Rossini’s opera “La Cenerentola” and for the ballet choreographed to music of Prokofiev.
This coming weekend, we will see a third Higgins production built on that story when Opera Theater presents, for the first time in its 60-year history, Jules Massenet’s “Cendrillon,” a work that has been too much ignored for most of a century but is beginning to win attention for its considerable charms.
In the years following its 1899 premiere at the Opera-Comique in Paris, “Cendrillon” gained many admirers through stagings in numerous opera houses. For a while, it was considered a challenger to Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” but 20th century tastes then began to wander away from much of Massenet’s output, save for the two operas of his which became staples, “Manon” and “Werther.”
Today, as opera companies search for new fare among the old to give their audiences musical adventures both safe and savory, Massenet is getting second looks, and one hears of well-received productions, outside his native France, of “Thais,” “Herodiade,” “Le jongleur de Notre Dame,” and “Le Cid,” among others.
Certainly among those “others” is “Cendrillon,” an opera that contains music of lyrical beauty and grace, wit and variety, an opera that persuasively recounts the familiar old story of the put-upon Cinderella, her bossy stepmother and nasty stepsisters, the fairy godmother who comes to her rescue, Prince Charming, and, in this configuration of Charles Perrault’s literary version of the tale, Cinderella’s long-suffering father.
Ronald Zollman, the highly-sought-after Belgian conductor returning as music director after his splendid handling here of “Manon” in 2006, says of the story, “It is one we like to believe is real.” About the music, Zollman adds: “Although little known because the opera has been unfairly neglected, it will not seem unfamiliar. It is natural music, beautiful and happy when the situation calls for that, triumphal at the ball. It is lovely fairy tale music.”
The visiting stage director, Chuck Hudson, an experienced veteran of opera and theater productions, calls the music “fantastic, at all times suitable for the characters and the action.” In IU Opera Theater’s new production, that action has been set in late 18th or early 19th century France, the Napoleonic period, a time, says Hudson, of “elegant madness, of post-revolution varieties in social classes, of fashionable high society and social climbing. Our aim is to create the imaginative dream world of a girl coming of age in a household lacking a mother figure, a feminine role model. The girl falls in love with her Prince charming. Children in real life still have those hopes of escaping a broken home and having dreams come true.”
Hudson says the sets are “magical and aided by IU’s ability to provide topnotch technical support. They transform, shift, change in front of the audience. David’s sense of detail and imagination is astounding.”
Higgins likens the stage environment to that of “a toy theater which comes to life. The sets are painted in engraving style, sepia, in water color fashion, like an illustration, with a false proscenium in mid-stage. We’ve boiled the locations down to three, using mechanics, our turn-table twists around to reveal different scenes. We’ve got fancy lighting effects and a spectacular entrance for the fairy godmother. It’s all meant to be visually stimulating, and what the audience will see has been rendered in a style that will remind people of a children’s book dating to early in the 20th century. I’ve designed costumes from the Napoleonic period for the principals. The fairy costumes are of the period, too, but whimsical, more exaggerated.”
Higgins says “Cendrillon” is “a very exciting piece. Work on it has been a joy. The story lends itself to romantic interpretation, and I’ve sought to emphasize that. There’s ballet, also, in the mix, and a children’s chorus. The production needs are quite different from those in ‘Cenerentola.’ Rossini departs significantly from the original story. He got rid of the fairy elements. Massenet did not.”
Hudson refers to “Cendrillon” as “a love story as well as fairy tale. I’ve made a study of fairy tales. They should speak to adults as well as children as they strengthen a belief that we can refresh our lives, follow our dreams, and have the courage to invade the dark woods. ‘Cendrillon’ can do that.”
He says rehearsals have been going “very well, right on schedule. The cast is doing a great job. I’m a physical, in-your-face director, and they’re eating that up. Everyone seems excited about what we’re accomplishing. I certainly am.”
“It’s all taking shape,” according to Maestro Zollman, “slowly, surely, hopefully. The singers have to be very sensitive to the French language, which is difficult for English-speaking singers. The language is sung in the front of the mouth while music should be sung from inside. That’s quite a challenge. We had 40 hours of special rehearsals in December to find the right way of singing. I’m a strong believer that when music is well articulated, it projects better, whether a listener understands the language or not. I insist on the best possible French, and we’re getting there. I’m sure I’ve been a kind of nightmare to them.”
A French music critic and contemporary of Massenet judged that, in “Cendrillon,” the composer had “dusted the tale of Perrault and the libretto of Henri Cain with a fine powder of sounds.”
May these and fairy dust be prominent when the curtain rises at the Musical Arts Center come Friday evening.
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.
