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Cinderella: that’s the one with the pumpkin coach, the glass slipper and the girl whose exquisite little foot fits it, enabling her to escape the servitude of cinder-sweeping in favour of a royal palace. Or is it? Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti jettisoned all those accessories and more in their version, and Julia Burbach, in her entertaining contemporary reading for ENO, goes a step or two further.
The dusty old castle of Cinderella’s stepfather, Don Magnifico, is abandoned in favour of a chic modern metropolitan apartment ingeniously designed by Herbert Murauer (lit by Malcolm Rippeth), with fake library and on two levels joined by a lift. Friends and hangers-on party maniacally; wrapped boxes keep arriving. As we later learn, Don Magnifico has staved off penury only by squandering money due to Cinderella.
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Don Ramiro’s courtiers here become a chorus of red-garbed ancestral spirits, (costumes designed by Sussie Juhlin-Wallén) – some familiar royals such as Henry VIII and Queen Victoria among them – who anxiously, but amusingly, monitor his progress in procuring a bride to secure an heir.
A star is needed for the title role and ENO has found one in the Omani-born Canadian mezzo Deepa Johnny. She has an attractive voice with impressive coloratura, moves naturally and won all hearts. What more could one ask? She is partnered by Aaron Godfrey-Mayes as Don Ramiro, combining passion, secure high notes and similarly exemplary technique.
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Simon Bailey puts his excellent skills as a singing actor to lively use as an egregious Don Magnifico. Charles Rice is a creditable Dandini, while the roles of Cinderella’s sisters, Clorinda and Tisbe, are well taken by Isabelle Peters and Grace Durham. David Ireland’s strongly sung Alidoro steers the lovers together with the help of a troupe of infant mice with adorable eyelashes and floppy ears.
Christopher Cowell’s tailor-made translation crackles away on all cylinders, providing a lexicon of inventive rhymes for the patter-songs. Yi-Chen Lin conducts with superb control of phrasing and cumulative tension in Rossini’s distinctive crescendos. Sometimes she unleashes ensembles at a rate that makes it next to impossible to deliver the words, causing mishaps in ensemble, though arguably the fault lies with a text that demands the impossible in a language laden with consonants.
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Combined with Burbach’s hyperactive production, there’s perhaps a risk of overload, diminishing the impact of the moral of the story. It’s nevertheless a hugely enjoyable show, seen at its best in the final scene where Burbach stages a winning theatrical coup. At the top of a red-carpeted staircase in the prince’s palace we have a rear view of Cinderella apparently inhabiting an opulent, flame scarlet frock, being primped by attendants. Just as we fear she has betrayed her values, she steps away to reveal herself in the less attention-seeking white floral print dress she was wearing previously.
The Cinderella story has been around in some form since the Greeks, yet the message that humane sensibilities and the ability to forgive are to be prized above material possessions has never seemed more timely.
Ends 14 October
