Amelia Berry as Clorinda, Rachelle Pike as Tisbe and Sarah Castle as Angelina. Photo / Neil Mackenzie
Amelia Berry as Clorinda, Rachelle Pike as Tisbe and Sarah Castle as Angelina. Photo / Neil Mackenzie
Lindy Hume tells William Dart how she reworked La Cenerentola
Australian director Lindy Hume has had fun reworking New Zealand Opera's La Cenerentola from the production that was first aired by Queensland Opera two years ago.
"When you do something as personal as this, carbon copies aren't an option," she says. "We pretty much started all over again."
The operais set in London around the time Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, which was "the start of our contemporary craze for royal weddings. Dickens would have his own Cinderella story with Oliver Twist," she says. Hume is pleased her historical placement of this opera might have coincided with its first Australian production in 1844.
She sees the character of the Prince, Don Ramiro, as "a bit of a larrikin" and, after all, "Australian and New Zealand audiences love to support the underdog and slightly razz the aristocracy because they like the notion of the working-class person making good. And you can't write off romance."
As for Rossini, "the guy was a genius. He doesn't muck around. He's very much the instinctive artist. He knew his cast and he also knew his audience. In a way he was a showbiz creature."
Hume is also drawn to his "wonderful wit and, above all, his ability to build and build and build and then let it explode".
Another of the composer's virtues is his sense of gender justice "putting decisive women in leading roles", Hume says. He was an admirer of girls who knew their mind.
"Angelina (the opera's Cinderella character) is a very good person.
"She has a strong moral code which she applies whether she's a servant or a princess."
Alidoro, played by Egyptian baritone Ashraf Sewailam, who was a memorable Sparafucile for the director in NZ Opera's 2012 Rigoletto, is "the moral guide of the piece".
"He encourages her to show what she really is," Hume says. "The change that happens is not just to do with her clothes and her hair, it's an inner transformation."
Hume describes La Cenerentola as essentially "a friendly happy night at the theatre" singling out Dan Potra's designs as "absolutely ravishing, from the palace where we spend most of the evening to the fabulous Dickensian shop".
And who can ignore the hidden depths and truths of fairytale land?
"Fairytales do tend to have an underpinning of psychology, moralising and darkness," Hume says. "If they are to be a journey through the subconscious you need to have dark as well as light."
Sarah Castle as Cinderella and Marcin Bronikowski as Dandini.
Angelina is played by Manchester-based mezzo Sarah Castle, who is making a name for herself on the European operatic circuit, with parts ranging from the title role in Tan Dun's Marco Polo for Nederlands Opera and Nero in Monteverdi's Poppea for Israeli Opera to Purcell's Dido in Lausanne and Wagnerian characters in the Bayreuther Festspiele.
"We're all trying to find the ideal role," she says. "So often you end up thinking that the composer really didn't write this role for me."
One instance is Mozart's Cherubino, which she has played in Seattle, New Zealand and San Diego. "It takes so much effort and you can see why it's so often used as a test piece."
Finally, she settles on the part of The Composer from Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. "Once you start to learn it you realise everything about you loves it, physically, emotionally and musically.
Rossini's Angelina would seem to be another ideal and, for a mezzo accustomed to trouser roles, she is thrilled to wear "three big dresses, Dickensian full-length ballgowns with lots of petticoats. "Even the one that looks like rags is made out of the most gorgeous silk."
She admires the character of Angelina.
"There's a feistiness and resilience running in there," she says. "Her little aria at the beginning annoys her sisters so she simply sings it again in their faces, and keeps on singing. She has that inner strength."
Castle picks out the final Act II aria as a favourite ("Being the title role means you get to have the last word") and the sextet closing Act I is "particularly gorgeous and funny".
"I love ensemble singing and being very much in the middle of it all," she says. "I'm officially the contralto of the group."
She appreciates the years spent singing in Wellington choral groups, as well as Manchester duties as an alto in a BBC radio choir. "My fellow choristers find it hilarious that I sing Valkyries all around the world, then come back to Manchester to sing hymns."
Gioachino Rossini had a busy year in 1817. At 25, having cemented his reputation with
The Italian Girl in Algiers
(1813) and The Barber of Seville (1816), the Italian composer enjoyed four premieres, headed by the sparkling
La Cenerentola
in Rome's Teatro Valle.
There had been discussion about a suitable subject for an opera to play during the city's carnival. Eventually, as librettist Jacopo Ferretti recalled, "weary of making suggestions, and half falling asleep, in the middle of the yawn I murmured 'Cinderella'."
La Cenerentola was not a success at its January premiere. This elegant take on the classic 17th-century fairytale Cendrillon struggled to make an impact for some years, despite the diva power of names such as Pauline Viardot-Garcia and her sister, Maria Malibran, only 17 when she launched a New York season of the opera in 1826.
Rossini has gone down in history as a speedy composer; it was said that he once found it easier to write a new aria than retrieve a fallen manuscript from the floor. La Cenerentola was three weeks' work and perhaps that fluency contributed to its vitality and vivacity.
English director Colin Graham was not a fan of Rossini's operas, finding them brittle and heartless, with cardboard, artificial characters. But he said La Cenerentola was different, "a human story, about a tender person with real emotions", praising its music as having "greater depth than Rossini's other scores".
Singers, such as Joyce DiDonato, agree. Last year, after 17 years' playing Angelina, the American mezzo emphasised the opera's alternative title, The Triumph of Goodness. She pointed out how important it is that philosophy rather than magic affects the heroine's faith - the key to her character is sincerity.
Where: Aotea Centre When: Opens tonight at 7.30, further performances on Wednesday, June 3 and Friday, June 5 at 7.30pm, and Sunday, June 7 at 2.30pm.
