Opera Scotland

Cendrillon 2024Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Read more about the opera Cendrillon

The Conservatoire gave the Scottish premiere of Massenet's delightful take on the Cinderella story back in 2006.  At that stage the opera school was collaborating with Scottish Opera, who provided both the orchestra and the Theatre Royal as a performance space.  There were also some students over from Rostov-on-Don in a fruitful exchange.  The Conservatoire's operatic work has developed apace in recent years, and it can now produce the work entirely from its own student resources.

The role of Prince Charming was composed by Massenet for mezzo-soprano, though many performances use a tenor.  The 2006 production took that second option.  However in 2018 Fife Opera staged it in the mezzo version.  The conductor and director in Kirkcaldy were Alistair Digges and Douglas Nairne, who were both students in Glasgow in 2006.  Indeed the latter had a brief solo spot.  Clearly the opera made a positive impression on them.

In the meantime the opera has also been produced at the RNCM in Manchester, so is clearly seen as an appropriate vehicle for students.  This second Conservatoire production confirmed that impression, with a generally excellent team of young singing actors on display.  Central to the enterprise was the highly experienced Dutch conductor Nicholas Kok.  Not a frequent visitor here, he controlled the performance with a delightfully light touch.  The excellt orchestral reduction by Tony Burke was used, though with thirty-nine players in the pit there was certainly no suggestion that Massenet's gorgeous orchestration was underprojected.

The director was Emma Jenkins, fresh from her recent success with Scottish Opera's Daphne.  The updating of period and transplant to a grand hotel setting added little but was generally unobjectionable.  It did allow for a chorus of hotel staff to be greater in number than the domestic team might have been. Of greater importance was the successful direction of the characters.  Cinderella's father, Pandolphe, was always synpathetic while constantly frustrated.  His wife and step-daughters were greedy and self-centred, but not as absolutely nasty as can sometimes appear.

The central characters were beautifully played.  Nikki Martin made a lovely Cinderella.  Tall and elegant, she has a glowing, rounded soprano tone, perfectly suited to projecting those sections of her music that require a tinge of melancholy soulfulness, but still able to project the joy required as the clouds lift. Prince Charming is the one role double cast - lucky the company that has two tenors able to cope with this music.  At the opening night, Daniel Gray Bell revealed a superb voice - sweet-toned throughout his range, but with a ringing top beautifully projected.  He was also at all times a sympathetic actor.

The role of the Fairy is a tricky one to bring off.  The French coloratura style can sometimes seem brittle and rather cold in tone, but that was not an issue with Audrey Tsang.  Her technique is faultless and she produced a faultless stream of dazzling notes while still sounding sympathetic.  The family members. led by Pawel Piotrowski's always sympathetic father, were all carefully directed.  Madame and the two girls behaved, and were costumed extravantly, without being too grotesque, and their singing was beautifully controlled.  oshua McCullough's excellent bass made a notable impression in his brief appearance as the king.

The designs by Janis Hart, lit with subtlety by Davy Cunningham, were impressively elegant, while containing enough entrnces and exits to accommodate a Feydeay farce.

This excellent staging showed once again that we should be allowed to hear Massenet's operas more frequently.  There may well be others that would be suitable for student performers.  This team coped beatifully, and they all managed to project the French text with clarity.