“Let’s all remember how important it is to take humour seriously,” declares the director Julia Burbach in English National Opera’s press notes. I hope those words will not come back to haunt her, for I have enjoyed much of her previous work. Comic opera, though, is hard graft for a director. There are at least two prerequisites: (a) to have a sense of humour; and (b) mastery of the stagecraft needed to send it across the footlights. While Burbach may possess the first of these qualities, on the evidence of this modern-dress Cinderella (Rossini’s La Cenerentola, her debut production for ENO) she’s a shot or two short of the second.
There were musical delights to savour – about which more later – but first, without getting too technical about it, we need to consider why the comedy fell so flat that not even ENO’s first-night guest list could lift it. Let’s start with some fundamentals. Almost all the action is played out in the mid-stage area against a flat-backed, multi-level set while the power locations downstage languish unused. This poor design choice not only damages the characters’ relationship with each other and their collective relationship with the audience, it has a deleterious impact on audibility, especially when debut conductor Yi-Chen Lin sends the ENO Orchestra into overdrive under the patter numbers.
On the subject of patter, Christopher Cowell’s English translation borders on the unsingable. I’d love to know what the cast principals made of the inelegant, denture-chewing text they had to spit out at regular intervals, because his words certainly weren’t designed for fluent singing. Elsewhere, Cowell’s rhyming dictionary is painfully in evidence while catchy vulgarisms serve as a replacement for wit. “I’d rather vibe the night away” is an early example of a toe-curling operatic cool.
Stage dispositions lack flexibility and wit. Individuals are so devoid of personality that even the larger-than-life buffo presence of Cinderella’s wicked stepfather Don Magnifico, whose pomposity and preposterousness are baked into his very name, is presented as a bland man in a suit. A lack of connection between characters (there are several cases of aimless wandering) is best exemplified by the staging of Cinderella and Don Ramiro’s love at first sight (“Un soave non so che” in the original) which is rendered through geometric perambulation and zero eye contact.
In happier news, the voices gave great pleasure. Simon Bailey as Don Magnifico gave a masterclass in textual clarity; indeed, I cannot recall a finer vocal interpretation of this role. Deepa Johnny, the Omani-born Canadian mezzo-soprano, is blessed with the kind of honeyed timbre you could melt inside and she lent tremendous class and skill to the title role. Rossini’s fairy godmother substitute, the philosopher Alidoro, was properly given high prominence despite the modest amount of singing he does after his sublime first-act aria – and baritone David Ireland more than had its measure.
Along with those stand-out performances, the fast-rising tenor Aaron Godfrey-Mayes was an attractive Don Ramiro (aka Prince Charming) and baritone Charles Rice a personable Dandini, while Isabelle Peters and Grace Durham made the most of their opportunities to shine as Cinderella’s stepsisters, Clorinda and Tisbe. The ENO Chorus was given plenty to do and the production itself stayed busy, even if some of it made little obvious sense. (I was flummoxed by the inclusion of some small children as mini-me daemons late in Act 2, but by then I’d lost the will to puzzle it out.)