Cendrillon (Cinderella): Komische Oper Berlin
About the Event
Enjoy Jules Massenet's opera Cendrillon in a staging by Damiano Michieletto, one of the world's most sought‐after young directors.
His production of La Bohème at the Salzburg Festival was highly acclaimed both by audiences and the press. The Venice‐born Michieletto will introduce himself to Berlin audiences with a piece whose story is known to all but whose music may still be unfamiliar to many: Cendrillon (Cinderella), with a magically romantic score by Jules Massenet.
From Rossini's La Cenerentola and Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella# to the Disney musical of the same name – the fairytale of Cinderella provides some of the most popular material for musical theatre stages around the world. Jules Massenet's Cendrillon, written at the turn of the 20th century, struck a nerve in an era of radical social and technical change, in which there was an almost boundless yearning for brief escapes from a reality which was increasingly coming to overwhelm people.
Massenet emphasises the magical and dreamlike qualities of the story, wholly focusing in his version on the happiness of the two lovers and the threats that happiness faces. The airy orchestral sounds so typical of late‐Romantic French opera make the prince and Cinderella appear as beings from a world which seems to represent a bare caricature of now questionable norms and values, while also artfully referencing and exaggeratedly parodying Baroque musical forms.
This work is only rarely found on schedules in Germany, and it has never been performed in Berlin. High time, then, for a new production – because what could be better than occasionally dreaming one's way into the fairytale love story of a prince and a girl of humble origins, especially when made to sound so beguiling by Massenet?
Opera in four acts (1899). Libretto by Henri Cain, based on the fairytale by Charles Perrault.
Cast / Production
Musical Direction: Henrik Nánási
Staging: Damiano Michieletto
Stage Design: Paolo Fantin
Costumes: Klaus Bruns
Dramaturgy: Simon Berger
Chorus: David Cavelius
Lighting: Diego Leetz
Cinderella: Nadja Mchantaf
Madame de la Haltière: Agnes Zwierko
Prince Charming: Karolina Gumos
The Fairy: Mari Eriksmoen
Noémi: Mirka Wagner
Dorothée: Zoe Kissa
Pandolfe: Werner van Mechelen
The King: Carsten Sabrowski
The Dean of the Faculty: Christoph Späth
The Master of Ceremonies: Nikola Ivanov
The Prime Minister: Philipp Meierhöfer
Choral soloists of the Komische Oper Berlin
