Review Roundup: CENDRILLON At The Met Opera

"Glorious," raved the New York Times when Joyce DiDonato sang the title role of Cendrillon at the Royal Opera in 2011. "Her performance was thoroughly enchanting." Now, for the first time ever, Massenet's sumptuous take on the Cinderella story comes to the Met, with DiDonato starring in the title role. She is paired with mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in the trouser role of Prince Charming, Kathleen Kim as the Fairy Godmother, and Stephanie Blythe as the imperious Madame de la Haltière. Bertrand de Billy conducts Laurent Pelly's imaginative storybook production.

Charles Perrault's 1698 fairy tale, the classic telling of the Cinderella story, is an excellent source for an opera-providing color, romance, and relatable themes for audiences of all ages. The work includes many moments in which Massenet is at his best and most widely accessible, from the pageantry and glowing musical nostalgia for the French baroque in the court scenes to the otherworldliness of the love music to the wit and humor that permeate the work as a whole.

Massenet's score features a preponderance of the lower female voices-including a mezzo-soprano as the object of Cendrillon's affection-that were so favored by French composers in the 19th century. The result is an otherworldly yet sensual tonal palette that serves as a rich background for this familiar tale. Against all the fairy-tale wonder of the score, the title character and her prince are recognizably human. Their Act II love duet is a masterful moment emblematic of Massenet's elegant style: The prince is lyrically effusive, while all of Cendrillon's gushing emotion is expressed in a single refined yet poignant phrase as she says "You are my Prince Charming," recalled at other points throughout the score.

Let's see what the critics have to say!

Zachary Woolfe, NY Times: "Ms. DiDonato is not helped by her Prince Charmant, a part written for what Massenet poetically called a "soprano de sentiment" and sung here (as in London and Barcelona) by the mezzo Alice Coote. Her voice is too blunt to expand over the score's long lines, and her crucial duets with Cendrillon are not ecstatic climaxes but trouble spots for both singers to negotiate rather than luxuriate in."

James Jorden, Observer: "If the well-traveled production by Laurent Pelly looks a trifle understated in its new home on the Met stage, it is otherwise a model of wit and economy. Within a vast chamber wallpapered with the text of the original Perrault fairy tale, the grotesques of Lucette's family and the Prince's court pranced and bumbled. Dizzily whimsical costumes included a feathery confection for the fairy godmother that would surely have won the Couture Challenge had Project Runway been on the air in 1957."

Eric C. Simpson, NY Classical Review: "Though there aren't a lot melodies in Cendrillon that stand out among the composer's most memorable, the score features that peculiar inspiration that gives Massenet's best music its emotional force. While tinkling effects here and there evoke magical enchantments, for the most part the orchestration is light, enabling him to reach a lush romanticism when needed without feeling overwrought. There is a remarkable flexibility to much of the writing, adding musical wit to the comedic mix, with quickly turning, pattering trios and quartets. And as in so much of his greatest work, Massenet shows that special ability to move seamlessly from one mode quickly into the next."

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