Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 5 - Cinderella

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 24 Primarily owing to his utter devotion to the musical score, the French opera director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932–1988) ascended to the highest echelon of his craft. This fidelity was his answer to the age-old operatic debate central to Richard Strauss’s Capriccio (1942), derived from the title of an opera by Antonio Salieri: Prima la musica e poi le parol e, or, “First the music and then the words.” Ponnelle believed anything a designer or director could require was contained in the work of the composer and librettist. Especially later in by Justin Vickers First the Music: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Radical Method The cast of San Francisco Opera’s 2014 production (above),at the Prince’s ball. At left,a 1969 sketch by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle for Don Magnifico’s home. Kristin Loken Cory Weaver