Whether you guffaw at missiles hurtling from the theatre flies on to the stage – thump, cue laughter – is a matter of inclination. Moments into the overture of Rossini’s La Cenerentola (1817), the concluding opera in this year’s Edinburgh international festival, a thick volume of fairytales flopped down, followed more slowly by a putti-winged Rossini impersonator floating on a nimbus cloud and waving a feather. The Cinderella of the title threw aside her mop, ready to join in the telling of her own story. While some quarters of the audience (myself, my neighbour) were inwardly writhing at the cliche of yet another dumb-show prelude cutting across the music, everyone else was chortling.
Stefan Herheim, the Norwegian director and co-designer currently everywhere, is scarcely short of ideas. Too many is never enough. They swarm like termites without the same degree of order. In his production of Pelléas et Mélisande at Glyndebourne earlier this summer, his meticulous over-interpretation choked Debussy’s subtle masterpiece.
In Edinburgh this Opéra de Lyon production seemed destined for a similar fate. Given the difficulty of staging Rossini’s comedies – all those intricate musical mechanisms whirring ceaselessly – perhaps Herheim in panto mode would get away with it.
Disparate imagery erupted pell-mell: dream castles, flying donkey, tick-tock cogs and wheels. Characters crawled from a fireplace that multiplied into a skein of proscenium arches. Cinders’s plastic cleaning trolley turned into a royal carriage. The winged Rossini – plump and middle-aged even though the composer wrote the work when he was 24 – was joined by an entire, wriggling, jigging, choreographed chorus of overfed lookalikes. Luckily, they sang well. Bubbles, glitter, confetti and dry ice added to the already aerated atmosphere. Only drones and the kitchen sink were missing.
Stonily resistant at first, I yielded (not so my neighbour) because of the expert musical standards for this delicious score, and some good gags in the second half. Stefano Montanari conducted with panache and drew crisp, clean playing from the Opéra de Lyon orchestra. He also showed his own comic timing, engaging in lively banter from the pit. Among the sturdy ensemble cast, Russian baritone Nikolay Borchev shone as Dandini, always the most intriguing character.
The Canadian mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier won sympathy and laughs as a salty, audacious Angelina/Cinderella, sparkling in vocal articulation, physically expressive. Having won her man, she turns into a crazed puppet at the end, realising she’s traded all for a wimpish prince, although Taylor Stayton sang the role with persuasive elegance. Herheim returns to the Royal Opera House (following a successful Les Vêpres Siciliennes) in November to direct The Queen of Spades. We can allow him this knockabout Rossini, rapturously received. Woe betide him if he messes with Tchaikovsky.
You may think Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) celebrated his birthday, or several of them, earlier this year. In fact, the day itself dawned only last Saturday. His gifts as composer, conductor and all-round charismatic musician left an impact on millions, young and old. The best part of the anniversary has been the renaissance of interest in his own compositions, often overshadowed – musicals aside – by his other activities. So while the Proms, appropriately, gave the birthday evening to a cheerful, slick account of On the Town (which I saw on BBC Four), elsewhere the choices were less obvious. For a lunchtime Prom – Bernstein on Broadway and Beyond – at Cadogan Hall, the fast-rising mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta, with Michael Sikich, piano, whipped up a feather-light reading of Bernstein’s La Bonne Cuisine, with the world premiere of Crème Brûlée on a Tree by Bushra El-Turk as a sharp palate-cleanser. We also heard the UK premiere of a new completion of the unfinished ballet Conch Town (1941), where the seeds of West Side Story’s “America” first appear,
For the last Queen’s Hall concert of the Edinburgh festival, the inventive Hebrides Ensemble played Bernstein’s early piano trio, written when he was 19 and well worth hearing, even if it can now go back in the drawer.
More interesting was the late Arias and Barcarolles (1989). Singers J’Nai Bridges and Alex Otterburn, and pianists James Baillieu and Philip Moore, captured all the wry melancholy of these songs about family matters. Not finished yet, Bernstein 100 has been the most far-reaching global celebration of a musician I can recall, enlivened (mostly) by eye-witness memories from the many who met him.
Unaccountably no one has yet interviewed me about the occasion I shook his hand, but I’m confident the time will come.
Star ratings (out of 5)
La Cenerentola ★★★
Hebrides Ensemble ★★★★
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