THEATER REVIEW: CINDERELLA



Cinderella (Kate Lindsay) in Cinderella.

 Fairytale Marx a spot

By Ed Rampell

This L.A. Opera production of Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) is nothing short of a sheer delight. It ranks amongst the most enchanting of all of the operas I’ve ever seen. The music, conducted by James Conlon, is frothy, as lighthearted as the Wagnerian Flying Dutchman’s score and story are full of sturm und drang. Joan Guillen’s sets are inventive, while his costuming, along with the stellar cast -- including a charming quintet of mice -- are exceedingly magical. Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey fits the bill perfectly in the title role (Georgian mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze plays Cinderella during the April performances) and Italian bass-baritone Vito Priante as Dandini steals scenes with a kleptomaniac’s gay abandon.

More on the stellar cast below, but what of the story? Rossini’s cheery concoction, with its libretto by Jacopo Ferretti, is of course a retelling of the vintage fairy tale first published in 1697 and subsequently re-published by the Grimm Brothers circa 1812. Fans beware: Rossini’s version is different from others with some dissimilar elements, which this plot-spoiler adverse reviewer won’t disclose. But the essential storyline remains the same.

In essence, poor little Cinderella is mercilessly exploited by her stepsisters Clorinda (soprano Stacey Tappan) and Tisbe (played, in a bit of unconventional if welcome casting -- despite a libretto line referring to her ivory white skin -- by the Black mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), and step-father, the wittily named Don Magnifico (Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli). These three rascals dream of grandeur, but apparently live in a home that has seen better days, hence the cutest mice this side of the Mickey Mouse Club and the Mouseketeers in the household that is slavishly looked after by the downtrodden Cinderella. She is reduced in status and role to a mere scullery maid, a servant -- if not an outright slave -- by her step-siblings and stepfather, who are genuinely cruel to this impoverished but pretty young lady who sweeps the cinders and cooks their meals.

In the guise of a fairy tale Rossini and his librettist are clearly making reference to the exploitation of labor. Other scenes and characters reinforce a social critique composed a year before the birth of Karl Marx. In an expression of class solidarity as well as in a simple humane act of compassion, Cinderella surreptitiously gives a character she believes to be a beggar -- whom her haughty stepsisters with their pretensions towards superiority scorn -- food.

But this aspect of class conflict is further expressed by another character, and ladies and gentlemen, please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to the great Dandini. In Cinderella there’s a lot of mistaken and/or hidden identity -- an operatic convention -- and Dandini is actually the (not-so-)humble servant of dashing Don Ramiro (tenor Rene Barbera), although through a series of plot contrivances they trade places and switch roles. Dandini relishes playing the powerful prince and assumes this part, full of social status and stature, with gusto. He enjoys dressing for the part and is quite a dandy -- hence his rather hilariously apropos nomenclature. Priante plays the character with great panache, full of sparkling wit, in portraying the subservient flunky who yearns to be the top banana, but for the unfair societal pecking order he is, unfortunately, born into.

Rossini’s titular character in The Barber of Seville similarly chafes under these unfair class distinctions imposed upon Figaro, who is also the lead character in Mozart’s 18^th century The Marriage of Figaro. Through these class conscious characters in class conflict with their “betters” Mozart expressed nascent Enlightenment ideals while Rossini evoked the French Revolution’s principles of “Liberte, eqalite, fraternite.” One can easily imagine both Figaro and Dandini singing Tevye’s lament in Fiddler on the Roof: “Lord… Would it spoil some vast eternal plan, If I were a wealthy man?”

Although Rossini explores themes of class struggle in Cinderella, the war between the classes is resolved magically -- with a dose of Christian morality -- through the genre conventions of the fairytale, wherein all the characters live happily ever after (with the possible exception of that rapscallion Dandini, who is, alas, once again reduced to servitude). However, the Italian composer was also capable of positing a political solution to social injustice. Rossini’s final opera, William Tell, is an explicitly political tale about revolution, which celebrates Swiss resistance to the tyrannical Hapsburg dynasty. Interestingly, like Cinderella, this 1829 opera is also suggested by legend (if not fairytales per se). In it, Rossini renders rousing music of a revolutionary nature, of justice triumphing over oppression. As all good Lone Ranger fans know its brassy musical fanfare and theme literally trumpeting the arrival of righteousness is derived from the incomparable, galloping William Tell Overture.

But in Cinderella we have a more playful Rossini, his bel canto opera full of great comic performances by droll, grandiose stepsisters and a stepfather who never miss the opportunity to overstep their boundaries; those whimsical, cavorting acrobatic rodents; and the one, the only great Dandini. Cinderella touchingly sings, “Virtue is my splendor, love my wealth” and later, when the wrongs are righted and the last has become first, she warbles: “My revenge is forgiveness.”

What a great fable full of utopian sentiment, of commoners and royals united in a moral certitude and rectitude.

This opera is ideal for children of all ages.


Cinderella runs through April 7 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.

 

THEATER REVIEW: ALBERT HERRING

A scene from Albert Herring.

Sex sings

By Ed Rampell

Benjamin Britten’s comedy of manners, Albert Herring, premiered in 1947 at Glyndebourne, a grand country manor in the veddy British countryside near East Sussex. But this good fun opera about sexual repression unfortunately remains all-too-contemporary, what with Republican presidential candidates debating contraception and Rick Satan-orum running for witch-burner-in-chief and all.

When the prim and not so proper village of Loxford runs out of vestal virgins for its annual, traditional May Day Festival (no red flags, please -- this is Edwardian England, after all), they turn to the virginal and eponymous Albert Herring (tenor Alek Shrader). Like his nation’s future prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Albert is the child of a green grocer (mezzo-soprano Jane Bunnell). Much as with today’s GOP buffoons, Loxford’s power players place a premium on chastity, as well as on greed.

The resident one percenter, Lady Billows (Scottish singer Janis Kelly alternates in the role with soprano Christine Brewer), is tended to by Florence Pike (mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), a domestic servant with airs, at her ladyship’s posh estate, beautifully evoked by scenic designer Kevin Knight. Lady Billows offers a handsome sum as reward for Albert’s virtue, while she presides over a retinue of comical sycophants. The festival committee includes those not so stellar pillars of the community: The Vicar Mr. Gedge (baritone Jonathan Michie); the Mayor Mr. Upfold (tenor Robert McPherson); the Superintendent of Police Budd (bass Richard Bernstein); and the teacher Miss Wordsworth, a sort of old maid, well-played by soprano Stacey Tappan.

Not all of the Loxforders pretend to be such goody two shoes. A trio of undomesticated youngsters add to levity. The drolly named Sid and Nancy may not be punk rockers like the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, but as the youthful lovers baritone Liam Bonner and mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack add a devil-may-care ingredient to the simmering stew of social propriety. Ultimately, boys will be boys, and predictably, as Albert is quite publicly lauded for his moral uprightness, with a little help from the mischievous Sid and Lady Billows’ bounty, all hell breaks loose. Much to the constable’s consternation amidst several, uh, red herrings, he is no longer a Prince Albert in a can. Although Albert’s coming of age is couched in hetero camouflage, Britten was reportedly gay, and his lampooning of sexual repression may have been his encoded ripostes to homophobia.

Mr. Knight’ sets, with rather large models of various homes in the background, aesthetically evoke the English countryside, while his period costumes conjure up a highly class stratified and rarefied era. Whereas Lady Billows’ home is suggestive of manorial splendor (not unlike, one suspects, Glyndebourne), the Herrings’ claustrophobic grocery shop is realistically rendered. The scenic transitions, enhanced by Rick Fisher’s lights, are gems as the Shanghaied cast, apparently impressed into service as stagehands, seamlessly, fluidly move from one time and place to another. But the fact that part of the background is simply bare and black -- at least viewed from my angle -- distracted me from Samuel Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief.

James Conlon’s baton reigns over a 13-piece orchestra with a sprightly score and much recitative singing, although there is no breakout aria or solo number per se that shakes the rafters. Paul Curran adeptly directs his ensemble cast with a flair for the bawdy and vaudevillean. Herring’s libretto, by Eric Crozier, is based on the French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story Le Rosier de Madame Husson. Although sung in English supertitles are projected in English throughout the performance. Rule Britannia!

Innocence -- or rather innocence lost -- is a recurring theme in Britten’s work; his operatic take on Herman Melville’s angelic but doomed sailor Billy Budd (the mariner has the same last name as Herring’s policeman) premiered in 1951. Undercurrents of angsty sexuality roiled Britten’s version of Henry James’ symbolically titled The Turn of the Screw, which debuted in 1954 and was staged by L.A. Opera last season. (The centennial of Britten’s birth is next year.) While Britten put the sex into East Sussex, the hanky-panky in Albert Herring is largely played for laughs, although beneath the surface Britten’s opera jabs the tyrannical puritanical busybody brigades of then and now. One wonders what opéras bouffes the current Republican presidential race will someday inspire?  


Albert Herring runs through 17  at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.

  

THEATER REVIEW: SIMON BOCCANEGRA

Simon Boccanegra (Placido Domingo) in Simon Boccanegra. Photo by Robert Millard.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

By Ed Rampell

Widely perceived as a hoity-toity elite art form for the one percent, opera often gets a bum rap as a stuffed shirts’ sonic sphere, but Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (based on a similarly named historical figure) gives the lie to this cliché. Marx and Engels wrote in 1848’s Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle,” and with its plebians versus patricians battle, this clash is clearly reflected in Simon Boccanegra, which premiered nine years later at Venice. Verdi’s opera opens in medieval Genoa (the Italian coastal city-state Christopher Columbus hailed from) as Simon Boccanegra (Placido Domingo) is voted Genoa’s first “Doge."

According to conductor James Conlon’s pre-opera lecture, in the 14^th century Venetian dialect Doge is the 20^th century Italian language equivalent of “Il Duce”-- Benito Mussolini’s title -- and means “duke” or “leader.” But Simon was no Blackshirted fascist. Indeed, he is a man of the people, a former pirate who represents the aspirations and interests of the masses against the patrician class -- the Middle Age’s aristocratic one percent. Originally, Genoa’s Doge was elected by popular suffrage, although his term of office was for life. If I understood Conlon correctly, this 1339 election marked Europe’s first democratically elected head of government.

Set against this background of power struggles, Verdi agilely interweaves a complex personal story full of mistaken identities, as the opera jump cuts to circa 1364. No simple Simon, Boccanegra still serves as Genoa’s Doge, as he tries to balance the plebian-patrician strife plus possible war with the competing city-state of Venice. Like a prototype of Flower Power leaders, Simon says “peace and love” and pursues policies to implement them. Harboring quarter century old grievances, the base bass Jacopo Fiesco (Vitalij Kowaljow) plots to topple the Doge and assumes the identity of Andrea Grimaldi. In the process, he unwittingly adopts a girl called Amelia Grimaldi (Ana Maria Martinez) who -- unbeknownst to all at this point -- is not only Fiesco/Andrea’s granddaughter, but Simon’s long lost love child.

Fiesco’s fiasco triggers a series of complicated events your spoiler adverse reviewer is loathe (and too lazy) to reveal. The golddigging Paolo Albiani (Paolo Gavanelli) and Gabriele Adorno (Stefano Secco) each woo Amelia. For some dubious reason the hotheaded Adorno is a hero of this opera, although he not only threatens to murder Simon -- whom he mistakenly believes to be likewise courting Amelia -- but his beloved, too, when Adorno suspects Amelia of being unfaithful to him. At one point, I wanted to shout out, “Hey Amelia! Why don’t you just tell Adorno that you found out Simon is actually your father, moron?” -- but I don’t think the crowd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Verdi’s ghost would have appreciated it. (Ironically, just as Grimaldi is now the name of Monaco’s royalty, Theodor W. Adorno was a prominent 20^th century Marxist thinker of the so-called Frankfurt School, whose students included Angela Davis.)

Suffice it to say, this being a non-comedic opera, a melodramatic death with a requisite amount of staggering about onstage is required, and Verdi, but of course, delivers the goods, the bads and the uglies in this action packed precursor to those Spaghetti Westerns. (Take one wild guess who gets to chew the scenery during the big scene?) What Verdi doesn’t deliver, however, is a toe tapping aria fans leave the theatre humming. This, along with the overtly political nature of the subject matter, may have prevented Simon Boccanegra from scaling La Scala’s heights in the operatic pantheon, alongside of, say, Verdi’s La Traviata and Aida (which I still remember being staged at the Roman Forum with live camels and elephants when I was 12).

That’s not to say that the score isn’t sonorous, as well as wide ranging in its tonality. Harps and understated wind instruments convey a sense of serenity, while at other times brassy instrumentation and drumming conjure up the martial mood necessary for much of this class struggle text, with its libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Arrigo Boito. Conlon’s supple baton nimbly presides over the orchestra and work which he clearly dearly loves.

Director Elijah Moshinsky’s mise-en-scene of this Les Miserable-type mass drama is masterfully staged, as what I imagine must be the entire L.A. Opera cast (and crew?), 50 or so performers by my count, bring alive the historical epic sweep of this saga inspired by actual events. Fight (club) director Charles Currier’s brio on the boards evokes the dueling and demos of a restive populace. Costume designer Peter Hall’s brilliantly colored medieval apparel captures the spirit of that bygone age, and helps to transport us back in time.

But kudos go to scenic designer Michael Yeargan’s colossal sets, once again bringing medieval Italy back to life, as they did last year with Yeargan’s scenery for L.A. Opera’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Yeargan’s Genoa imparts a sense of the sea worthy of the burg that produced Columbus, while his massive columns evoke an imperial sensibility. Act I’s Council Chamber scene is bravura, and the map room in the Doge’s palace during Act II isn’t too shabby, either. And I don’t know if Yeargan is responsible for the graffiti scrawled on the wall, proclaiming in Italian “Victory to the people!” and similar slogans during a scene of mass protest, but it’s a worthy addition, considering that the Occupy L.A. encampment was just a stone’s throw away at City Hall, which is visible from the Music Center.

Simon Boccanegra premiered in 1857 as Italy was on the verge of a unification the politically-minded Verdi agitated for, both on and offstage, as a deputy in unified Italy’s parliament. Similarly, L.A. Opera continues to present socially relevant works, and one likes to think that Placido Domingo’s Simon would have supported the Occupy Wall Street movement, just as Domingo’s Pablo Neruda in 2010’s Il Postino most assuredly would have. Despite the pricey seats, these are operas for the 99 percent that express the tenor of their times.

Simon Boccanegra runs through March 4 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.