Rossini : La Cenerentola
Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Fabio Luisi
So Joyce DiDonato says farewell to the title role of Rossini's La Cenerentola in this matinee broadcast from New York. If you're going to quit something, you might as well do so at the top, and she certainly did. This was as sweet and luminous an Angelina as you could wish to find, with singing to match. I just wish her setting had been a little more worthy of her formidable talents.
That's not a complaint against the singing; she was very well surrounded. Juan Diego Flórez is a long-standing accomplice, cutting a dashing figure, as usual, as Don Ramiro, the voice flowing easily and top notes ringing out securely. It's not always a beautiful sound, but it's an exciting one, and he is capable of a gentler timbre when necessary. The stepsisters (Rachelle Durkin and Patricia Risley) held their own, although there was far too much physical mugging going on, while the lower male voices were a trio of first-rate Italians. Luca Pisaroni was a resonant, if slightly smug Alidoro, but the part's written that way. Pietro Spagnoli was a richly-toned Dandini; he resorted to a few too many vocal mannerisms in Act 1, which broke up the vocal line too much for my liking, but settled down in the second act, and observed the denouement with appropriate relish. Alessandro Corbelli brought his habitual precision to Don Magnifico; like Spagnoli, too many bits of nonsense in Act 1, but a much more stable and satisfactory Act 2, and an object lesson in comic timing.
The gentlemen of the Met Chorus (no ladies required here, other than the three soloists), and the Orchestra, sang and played very well, with only one or two moments in some of the ensembles where Luisi let the timing slip just a hair. In Rossini it's lethal, and immediately apparent, but it's also next to impossible to get everything perfect in a live performance. The overall impression was musically very good, though Luisi missed out on one or two of the profounder moments of the score, notably the Act 1 Quintet, which never really quite laid bare the cruelty of the situation.
That said, he probably wasn't helped by the goings-on on stage, because I really didn't like Cesare Lievi's production, which was over-active, and not nearly as clever as it liked to think it was. The design, while tending a bit to the surreal, wasn't bad, nominally set at the turn of the 20th Century - but then why were Cinderella's ball- and wedding-dresses both crinolines, pretty, but old-fashioned? If that was a comment on modern mores, it didn't exactly hit the mark. Ditto with the whitened faces and rouged cheeks of the entire cast save Cinderella and her Prince. The end of Act 1 was an absurd game of musical chairs around a dinner table, ending with a food fight. The three-legged sofa was an entertaining gag the first couple of times, but got tedious by the end. Let's not talk about wrapping up five-sixths of the cast in gold ribbon in the Act 2 sextet, and the ludicrous amount of scenery-chewing misbehaviour required of the step-sisters. Confusing, time-wasting, emotionally void and senseless, it's high time the Met shelved it for a new one.
[Next : 15th May]
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