CENDRILLON / CINDERELLA

By Diana Simmonds

January 3 2025

CENDRILLON (CINDERELLA) Opera Australia with Sydney Festival at the Joan Sutherland Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 2 January-28 March 2025. Photography Rhiannon Hopley: above - Emma Matthews; below -  Ashlyn Tymms, Angela Hogan, Jennifer Black; below again - Emily Edmonds in her “carosse”

We probably know the Cinderella story: with origins in ancient Greece (Rodopis), Tang dynasty China (Ye Xian) as well as 500+ others across Europe. This version, however, opening the 2025 summer season for Opera Australia and the Sydney Festival is mainly the 1895 one by Jules Massenet and librettist Henri Cain, which was in turn based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper.

The production dates to 2006 and the Sante Fe Opera. They commissioned French provocateur Laurent Pelly and he designed and directed it – with Joyce DiDonato in the title role and singing in French across four acts and two hours 45 minutes. Santa Fe loved it.

According to a New York Times review it continued with great success: “…12 years later, by way of stops in London; Brussels; Barcelona; and Lille, France — brought the work to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time…” Now here’s a thing, it ran at two hours 28 minutes at Covent Garden and was back to two hours 45 at the Met. Didn’t Londoners clap? Who knows. In the northern winter of 2018-2019, it was declared “Blissful” for Lyric Opera of Chicago, at two hours 45 minutes with Siobhan Stagg as Cinders in four acts.

Fast forward to 2021/2022 and the Met’s “Holiday Season” presentation of Cinderella. Of it they said, “…presented with an all-new English translation in an abridged 90 minutes…” and two acts. The translation is by Kelley Rourke and the basics of Pelly’s staging remain. But…

This holiday presentation idea – short and colourful so we can say “bring the kids” – is fine when short and colourful is by Julie Taymor and the result is her magical Magic Flute. But whoever did the snipping of Cinderella is no Taymor and should not be allowed near pinking shears.

Life is made easier by the story’s familiarity – although few were brought up with Cinderella’s dad being on the scene and a snowflake to boot. Yet why bother with costly translation (“Abridged English language production a gift of Elizabeth M and Jean-Marie R Eveillard” – Met website) when surtitles are necessary anyway?

It’s been said that people were fed up with the Taymor Magic Flute and were demanding a change. Really? We’re getting Elijah Moshinsky’s Barber of Seville back this year and it first saw footlights in 1995. We had his Rigoletto for the seventh time in 2023 and did anyone object? Is Taymor less brilliant than he? Or simply a woman? Who knows. Thing is, this summer we have the Met’s idea of family-friendly truncation and it isn’t, if the show-length opening night yattering of unengaged small persons was anything to go by. At least they were unintentionally comical.

The irritating thing is that the Sydney cast is thrilling. Massenet saw the Fairy Godmother as the central character so he would have loved Emma Matthews whose vocal agility and brightness is everything the role demands, while her personal warmth towards Cinders is palpable. Her return from exile was years overdue.

Emily Edmonds and Margaret Plummer make beautiful music as the star-crossed Cinders and Prince. Wicked Stepmother and her odious brats (Angela Hogan, Jennifer Black, and Ashlyn Tymms) make the most of every moment and their grotesque costumes. Richard Anderson as Cinders’ dad almost makes one forgive him his feebleness in the face of wifely tyranny.

The company of dancers, assorted poobahs, flunkeys, court molls, and doxies (okay, ladies) is permanently on and successful in utilising every drop of colour and movement afforded by the wild, scarlet, and nonsensical costumes. Conductor Evan Rogister maintained discipline and lyricism with both orchestra and all onstage voices to drive the show at points when one might have been distracted and wondering, “WT…”

The set, by Barbara de Limburg, is a delight with giant pages of Perrault’s original book offering French speakers walls to read. The Fairy Godmother’s entrance on her huge pile of books is excellent and lovely touches of pinprick lights for stars and small lamps carried by maids are – funnily enough – reminiscent of the simple moments Julie Taymor brings to a spectacle. The lighting (Duane Schuler) does not translate and is murky at best. Laura Scozzi’s choreography does better and there’s always something good to look at – including four prancing Arab “ponies” pulling Cinderella’s coach. Nevertheless, for 2026 summer, I vote The Magic Flute.