Rockabilly meets Rossini: Cinderella at Lyric Opera of Kansas City

The Lyric Opera of Kansas City opened their season with a sparkling new production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola. Casting choices were very successful. As Angelina, Siphokazi Molteno was a strong presence, from her opening low notes of reflection, victimised but never victim, bearing within her intentional mezzo a presence and dignity that made her step-familial persecutors look merely silly. Her dominance over the final scene was very striking: not only does she agree to marry her prince, but she also dispenses mercy to her family. They may not be worthy, but her authoritative voice, as family matriarch and as princess, glided over our objections. 

Jack Swanson’s Don Ramiro really came into his own, fittingly enough, when he stopped the pretend-valet act, and sang his luxuriantly resonant aria in Act 2, with the coiffed lackeys backing behind. The audience lapped it up. Ian Rucher’s Dandini, meanwhile, was an especial stand-out. Who could have made more out of being Prince-for-a-day (and an evening)? Bewigged, in dandy teddy-boy suit and lace ruff for the ball (an Elvis-meets-le-roi-de-France look), he dominated his scenes, physically and vocally. And when he descended the social rungs, he became as vocally tame, in the last scene, as the satchel he carries: back to being a bit-player, not the star. 

Matt Burns as Don Magnifico, that fantastically silly faux-patriarch, was amusing, whether sleepy or tipsy, in striped pajamas or pinstripe. He had that sleight-of-hand (or sleight-of-voice) needed to keep up his antics and not lose a beat of his bass-baritone notes. The two sisters, Mikayla Lynn Hatfield and Christina Grohowski, showed the requisite pantomime malice. As Alidoro, Colin Ramsey had a commanding, expansive voice and a nicely curated scientist-dandy presence. The writer who followed him around everywhere, scribbling the story, was a nice meta touch in Wes Anderson fashion. The orchestra, under the baton of Gary Thor Wedow, after a subdued overture, livened up all the vocal machinations. 

We all love a proper Rossini moral-and-vocal tangle: you can feel it ramping up in the score, as tension and misunderstanding increase inexorably, until there is nothing for it but rapid-fire singing, miraculously articulate and yet impossible to untangle, voice on top of voice on top of voice. Ideally, stage business enhances the vocals. And it definitely did so here. I think particularly of the septet at the end of Act 1 where each of the seven come out from behind the topiary (and indeed move about trees, the better to express the permutations and combinations of their dilemmas.) 

I absolutely love what director Michael Shell, Steven Kemp (set designer) and Amanda Seymour (costumes) made of the whole Rossini jamboree. This is a new production which was built in Kansas City over the last 18 months, so it was particularly gratifying to see the synergy of local talent and artistic expression. Drawing loosely on a Wes Anderson aesthetic, they go all out for an arch mishmash of eras and conventions which nobody in their sane senses could argue with. Frivolous insanity! 18th-century wigs and pigtails are also curiously reminiscent of rockabilly pompadour hairstyles. Rows of marble busts are juxtaposed with selfies, cigarette-smoking sisters with impeccable topiary à la française; an open-topped vintage car, with Deliveroo take-out noodles for the morning after the night before. Everything is beautifully observed and meticulously rendered. Fun it is meant to be and fun it delivers. 

I love the bold hits of colour – the ‘think pinks’ of the palace and the luxurious garlands of roses, the Prince’s yellow tie, Cinderella’s yellow rubber gloves (and yes, a toilet plunger for good measure). The first scene is framed by a cut out of the cottage’s exterior: its shabby gentility inside evoked by branches overlaying the faded floral wallpaper. The house later lifts to reveal the perfect miniature of a palace etched against the sky. The last scene, which reconciles all the characters, even the nasty ones, reconciles even the sets: the cottage interior fuses with the palace interior, and we live happily, rosily and pinkly, ever after.