United States Alma Deutscher, Cinderella: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Opera San Jose / Alma Deutscher (conductor). California Theatre, San Jose, 17.11.2022. (HS)
Production:
Director – Brad Dalton
Sets – Steve C. Kemp
Costumes – Johann E. Stegmeir
Lighting – David Lee Cuthbert
Choreographer – Richard Powers
Cast:
Cinderella – Natalia Santaliz
Prince – Joey Hammond-Leppek
King – Ben Brady
Griselda – Stacey Tappan
Zibaldona – Julia Dawson
Stepmother – Rena Harms
Fairy – Megan Esther Gray
Minister – Joshua Hughes
Flower Girl / Head Elf – Helen Deutscher
In her seventeen years on this planet, Alma Deutscher has stirred up a lot consideration on the planet of classical music. A toddler prodigy, she has been performing since she was six years outdated – together with her personal concertos for violin and piano – and has carried out her compositions with the Vienna Radio Symphony, Strauss Kapelle Vienna and Glenn Gould Festival Orchestra in Toronto. A full-hour documentary on the BBC and a phase on ‘60 Minutes’ within the United States marveled at her and her work.
Her opera, Cinderella, may be very a lot a musician’s tackle the acquainted story. She is making her worldwide opera-conducting debut in a seven-performance run of the piece at Opera San José, fully reorchestrated and revised from earlier performances in Israel and Vienna. It is inconceivable to not be impressed.
Perhaps the easiest way to explain this musician is that she completely is aware of how music works, each in her writing and in her means to attract what she wants from an orchestra and singers. The outcome was a extremely pleasant three-hour efficiency on the California Theatre in San José. Her music winked knowingly at acquainted opera tropes however by no means overlooked the romantic thread on the story’s coronary heart, expressing it with soothing tunes and easy-on-the-ears harmonies. The solid threw themselves into Deutscher’s distinctive fairy-tale world, and a versatile set design moved issues alongside properly.
The first iteration of the piece debuted in 2014 with a small orchestra in Israel. Revisions in Vienna in 2016 and once more for the U.S. premiere in San José in 2017 (beneath the baton of Dame Jane Glover, no much less) led to a brand new orchestration for a bigger orchestra and an added youngsters’s refrain. This model was to debut in Salzburg final yr, however COVID-19 protocols restricted the size and orchestra dimension. San Jose can thus boast the premiere.
Deutscher’s tackle the story places music at the focus. Instead of becoming a shoe, the Prince finds Cinderella as a result of she is the one lady within the kingdom who might presumably know what comes subsequent in a melody she sang to him outdoors the ballroom earlier than her midnight retreat. He is a poet whose accountability to ascend to the throne frustrates him a lot that he offers his personal pocket book away within the forest to a mysterious outdated lady who seems to be a fairy. She finally ends up giving it to Cinderella, who desires to compose music however is caught copying components for her stepmother’s second-tier opera firm (with, after all, two evil and clueless stepsisters).
In the primary scene, Cinderella is uninterested in copying the bass components for the subsequent day’s opera (accented within the orchestral accompaniment). The stepmother and stepsisters bully poor Cinderella, all of the whereas lampooning backstage opera conduct on this and each different scene they’re in.
In Act II, confusion over the handwritten invitation to the ball and the king’s medical prescription results in extra musical hijinks when the stepsisters attempt to impress the king by singing the prescription to certainly one of Cinderella’s tunes. Banned from the ball by her stepfamily, who name her a ‘beggar girl’, Cinderella sings a lament. This later turns into the tune that intrigues the Prince and finally unites them as a pair.
The rating brims with acquainted opera tropes, not simply arias, duets and ensembles however sneaky allusions to iconic composers. References to Wagner inject themselves when the textual content turns to a marriage celebration (Lohengrin) and the appropriation of another person’s tune (Die Meistersinger). A pressure from Verdi’s ‘Sempre libera’ interrupts one other scene, and a fanfare dripping with celesta and trumpets finds its manner into the second that the Prince finds Cinderella (suppose Richard Strauss).
Melodies and harmonies, rooted in Romantic Era magnificence, draw back from trendy dissonances. (In interviews Deutscher says she merely writes music she desires to listen to.) The arias struck me as pastiches, completed to not mock however to suit acquainted composers’ kinds to the second. The stepsisters’ scenes carried the whiff of a Rossini comedy, Cinderella’s entrance tune conjured Mozart, and the lovers’ duet introduced Donizetti to thoughts. There can be a complete nationwide anthem for the story’s imaginary nation, which resembles not less than a dozen different European anthems.
The finest arias, nevertheless, owe a lot to Lieder by Schubert, whose knack for marrying phrases and music was fully applicable for the one which units a poem by the Prince to music, and for the lament in regards to the beggar lady solid out into the frozen darkish. These tunes return at key factors.
The solid, whose bios are crammed with references to protecting massive roles at well-known opera venues, shone too. With a candy lyric-soprano and youthful attraction, Natalia Santaliz made a great match with Deutscher’s musical palette and confirmed us why a shy prince may fall for her. Joey Hammond-Leppek’s polished lyric tenor matched nicely along with her voice. Mezzo-soprano Megan Esther Grey (who sang Mrs Lovett in Wolf Trap’s Sweeney Todd final yr) commanded the stage and confirmed each wit and poise because the fairy.
Soprano Rena Harms, who has sung lead roles at English National Opera, San Francisco Opera and Seattle Opera, spoofed an getting old opera diva royally because the stepmother, blasting out ringing excessive notes alongside the way in which. As her energetic daughters, soprano Stacey Tappan (who had roles within the Metropolitan Opera’s Eurydice and Marnie) teamed with mezzo-soprano Julia Dawson, an everyday at Frankfurt Opera, to inject well-timed bodily and musical humor in addition to stable singing. Also of observe was Joshua Hughes’s preening King’s Minister, whose fey responses added further layers of grins in a talking position.
By the way in which, that was Alma’s youthful sister, Helen, singing the roles of Head Elf and Flower Girl for the marriage, displaying a pure, interesting voice and a few appearing chops of her personal.
The ingenious manufacturing by Opera San José regulars Brad Dalton and Steve C. Kemp relied on dropped flats, a room on the palace that rolled out easily and a revolving staircase for the ball scene. That did the job with an affordable quantity of aptitude. Dalton bought probably the most out of the latent comedy too.
Above all, this was in regards to the fertile thoughts of an immensely gifted younger lady. She grew up in London, home-schooled by dad and mom who’re literature and linguistic professors, and now lives in Vienna the place she research music. Her subsequent opera, The Emperor’s New Waltz, debuts in March on the Salzburg State Theatre.
Harvey Steiman