Opera - Cendrillon

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

three stars

FRENCH composer Jules Massenet’s version of Cinderella may stick closer to the pantomime story everyone knows than Rossini’s La Cenerentola, but it still has its decisive differences.

Most obvious are the two “tableaux” of Act 3 where a post-ball Cinders (“Lucette” in this version) is reunited with her Prince Charming in a pastoral idyll before the slipper business brings them together in the real world in Act 4.

The music Massenet wrote for the Fairy Godmother (La Fee) and her retinue of spirits is some of the loveliest in the score, and it was delightfully sung in this staging for and by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s opera students. Audrey Tsang’s spectacular coloratura as La Fee and the six-piece ensemble around her did their best to steal the show.

The title character is also, naturally, a soprano, and Nikki Martin was perfectly cast in the role. The original score calls for a “principal boy” or “trouser role” soprano as Prince Charming, while here the part was sung by Canadian-born tenor James Schouten. He sounded rather strident earlier on, and the second of his duets with his mystery lover – in the second of those tableaux – showed the voices of both off to better advantage.

The main focus of the design (by Janis Hart) for Emma Jenkins’s production is for the rest of the action, in the opulent Hotel Royale, where Madame de la Haltiere and her daughters are attending the Prince’s bride-choosing soiree.

Her husband Pandolfe (Pawel Piotrowski) confesses to buyer’s remorse in his second marriage. He has much of the farcical larking about to do – including dropping his pants – with which the baritone did not always look entirely comfortable.

Madame (Flora Birkbeck), and her girls (Charlotte Bateman and Rosie Lavery) are a formidable trio, both vocally and physically, and Jenkins and choreographer Jack Webb give them plenty to do.

This is a very busy production that looks well on the New Athenaeum stage and bowls along at a cracking pace. In the pit the orchestra, under conductor Nicholas Kok, displayed some tuning problems in the overture among low brass and horns and in the string solos later, although there was some very fine playing from the winds.

In the final analysis, however, there is no music in Cendrillon that compares with Massenet’s biggest hit, the solo violin favourite The Meditation from Thais, and the opera is no match for Manon or Werther, his two most-performed works. But this is an opportunity to catch a charming rarity – further performances on Wednesday (January 31) and Friday (February 2).