Lyric Opera 2018-2019 Issue 6 Il Travatore

O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O 30 | December 1, 2018 - January 20, 2019 C ertain composers have needed a champion to draw attention to their excellence and create an enduring audience for them in the opera house. Jules Massenet is a good example. Arguably his country’s most commercial- ly successful opera composer in the last quarter of the 19 th century, Massenet knew how to please the public. But by the 1930s, outside France, the majority of his works were severely neglected. One could still find Manon , Werther , occasionally aïs and Don Quichotte , but not much else. In the 1970s, the international operatic scene did experience something of a Massenet revival. Nowadays, though, it’s comparatively rare to find a lesser-known Massenet work in a major theater. But one of those pieces brought back into circulation four decades ago has entered the repertoire worldwide, and that is Cendrillon . is opera’s appeal stems above all from its quite extraordinary heart, which emerges in the enchanting characterization of the heroine. She’s surrounded by four other principal participants in the story who sustain our atten- tion throughout: her father, Pandolfe; her stepmother, Mme. de la Haltière; “le Prince Charmant” – a.k.a. Prince Charming; and the character known in the opera simply as “La Fée”, “the Fairy,” more often referred to (in America, at least) as the Fairy Godmother. e music through the entire piece is wonder- fully varied, the text very much in the spirit of the opera’s literary source: Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre ( Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper ). Perrault (1628 -1703), a lifelong Parisian, wrote beautiful prose and poetry, the excel- lence of which was recogonized officially with his appointment to the prestigious Académie Française. He came from a wealthy family and studied law, after which he embarked on a suc- cessful career as a government administrator, supervising the management of royal build- ings. It wasn’t until his mid-sixties that his writing career took off. e vehicle was the farirytale, of which he was a pioneer – the first truly great writer to create this sort of story. His greatest contribution was a collection he called Histoires ou contes du temps passes (Stories or Tales of the Past , subtitled Les contes de ma mère l’oye – Tales of Mother Goose ). Children Karine Deshayes as Cendrillon in Laurent Pelly’s production, Gran Teatre del Liceu (Barcelona). ANTONI BOFILL A Fairytale to Love: Introducing Massenet's Cendrillon By Roger Pines