AN OPERA IN TWO ACTS, SUNG IN ITALIAN (WITH AN ABRIDGED, ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VERSION ON FAMILY DAY)
MUSIC BY GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868)
LIBRETTO BY JACOPO FERRETTI (1784-1852)
A CO-PRODUCTION OF HOUSTON GRAND OPERA, GRAN TEATRE DEL LICEU, WELSH NATIONAL OPERA, AND GRAND THÉÂTRE DE GENÈVE
WORLD PREMIERE: TEATRO VALLE, ROME, 1817
We have gathered interactive lessons, along with information pages, summaries, and an array of recommended videos here to invite young people, families, and teachers into the world of opera. The information below can be used to help prepare students and families before (or after) watching HGO’s Cinderella by Gioachino Rossini and Jacopo Ferretti. You will also find answers to some basic questions about opera.
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Forced by her stepfather and stepsisters to work as a maid, Cinderella is lifted out of her misery when the royal tutor recognizes her virtue and helps her win the prince’s heart at the palace ball.
Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Angelina who lived in the run-down mansion of her stepfather, the boastful baron Don Magnifico. Angelina had two lazy stepsisters, Tisbe and Clorinda, who forced the poor girl to do all the chores. They gave her the cruel nickname “Cinderella,” because she was always covered in cinders from stoking the fire. Seated by the fireplace, Angelina would sing herself a little song about a king who turned down pompous and vain suitors and chose for himself a bride who was sweet and good.
One day, a team of messengers arrived with news: Prince Ramiro, a local royal, was there to invite the eligible ladies of the household to a ball! And the fairest he would take as his wife. Tisbe and Clorinda fussed over the man they thought was “his highness.” Really, it was Prince Ramiro’s servant Dandini in disguise. Prince Ramiro and Dandini had switched identities so that the prince could better observe his potential princesses from the sidelines. However, the generous Angelina—whom he took for a kitchen maid—impressed him more than the frivolous Tisbe and Clorinda.
Don Magnifico realized this was a chance to lift his family out of poverty and accepted the invitation. But he forbade Angelina from accompanying them, leaving her sad and alone as he set off with his daughters for the palace. Suddenly, the prince’s royal tutor Alidoro appeared. He had come to reward Angelina for her good deeds, lending her a gown, a pair of bracelets, and a horse-and-carriage so she could attend the ball. Arriving at the palace in disguise, Angelina caused a jealous stir among her stepfather and stepsisters. Who could this mysterious lady be? And didn’t she look an awful lot like Cinderella?
With the party in full swing, Don Magnifico made himself at home, picturing the fine life he would soon lead once the prince picked one of his daughters. But Prince Ramiro had
already chosen a fiancée, and it wasn’t Tisbe or Clorinda. No, his heart belonged to the mysterious guest who so enchanted him. Before departing that night, Angelina gifted the prince one of her two bracelets. Seek me wearing the other bracelet, she told him, and then decide if you still wish to wed me. Meanwhile, Dandini had enjoyed himself pretending to be the prince. But it was time to end the game. “I am nothing but a servant,” he told Don Magnifico, who was enraged to learn he’d been tricked.
Next day, back at Don Magnifico’s, Angelina put on her rags and set to cooking and cleaning again. Every now and then, she would secretly admire the single bracelet she still possessed. The grumbling of her stepfamily, still cross for having been made fools of, was drowned out by a sudden storm. At that moment, who should appear at the door but Prince Ramiro himself! The storm had overturned his carriage, and he was seeking shelter at Don Magnifico’s home. Prince Ramiro, seeing the matching bracelet on Angelina’s wrist, recognized her as the mysterious beauty from the ball. He triumphantly offered his hand in marriage. “But she’s a servant!” objected Don Magnifico and his daughters, who were thrown into confusion. Humbled and ashamed, Angelina’s stepfamily laid themselves at the mercy of the newly crowned princess. Angelina graciously forgave them. The past was forgotten—it had been nothing more than a dream.
ISABEL LEONARD
ANGELINA (CINDERELLA)
mezzo-soprano
Angelina, the neglected stepdaughter of Don Magnifico, is put to work in the household, serving as a maid to her two stepsisters. She is kind, generous, and pure-hearted.
JACK SWANSON DON RAMIRO tenor
Don Ramiro, a handsome young prince, seeks to identify a girl to marry who will love him for himself, not because of his noble position. To this end, he disguises himself as his valet, Dandini, in order to see how girls will treat him when they think he is just a servant.
bass-baritone
Don Magnifico is a pretentious old bully who desperately wants Don Ramiro to marry one of his own daughters, Clorinda or Tisbe, in order to elevate his own status and wealth. He is abusive toward his stepdaughter Angelina.
IURII SAMOILOV DANDINI baritone
Dandini, the valet to Don Ramiro, disguises himself as the prince to help Don Ramiro find his true love among a multitude of mere flatterers and social climbers.
CORY MCGEE ALIDORO bass
Alidoro, the court philosopher and Don Ramiro’s tutor, discovers Angelina’s pure and charitable spirit and leads the prince to that household for Ramiro to discover the goodness of Angelina himself.
LORENZO PASSERINI, CONDUCTOR
JOAN FONT, DIRECTOR
XEVI DORCA, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER
JOAN GUILLÉN, SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER
ALBERT FAURA, ORIGINAL LIGHTING DESIGNER
MICHAEL JAMES CLARK, REVIVAL LIGHTING DESIGNER
RICHARD BADO, CHORUS DIRECTOR
HGO ORCHESTRA
HGO CHORUS
Rossini’s Cinderella more-or-less follows the traditional fairytale as you’ve heard it retold in storybooks and cartoons—but with a few big changes. When the opera premiered in 1817, it was considered inappropriate to have a woman’s bare foot appear onstage. So Jacopo Feretti, who wrote the text—or “libretto”— for Cinderella, switched the glass slippers to a pair of bracelets. You’ll also notice that Cinderella’s usual stepmother has been replaced with a stepfather. Rossini’s piece is an example of opera buffa, a style of Italian comic opera with silly plots and outrageous characters. These works usually featured a clownish role for a male soloist, known as a basso buffo. The stepmother was likely changed to the pompous Don Magnifico since audiences would have expected a bumbling basso buffo clown. Finally, you may be surprised by the absence of the fairy godmother and her “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo” spells. Instead, it’s the prince’s tutor, Alidoro, who fills this role. He supplies Cinderella with a carriage and an outfit for the ball. In our production, originally created by Spanish director Joan Font, Alidoro transforms the mice into a team of rodent footmen who carry Cinderella off in a chest of drawers that acts as a coach.
Rossini only had three weeks to complete the score of Cinderella! However, he was used to tight deadlines and had a toolbox of musical techniques to help hurry along the process. The crazy energy of Rossini’s music has a lot to do with an opera buffa vocal technique known as “patter.” Stuck on a single pitch, a singer recites a tongue-twister text at breakneck speed. Rossini will often combine multiple singers’ patter lines into a big ensemble number that bustles and scurries with activity— kind of like an interlocking clockwork contraption. These passages start off quietly but gradually get louder and crazier until everyone is singing at the top of their lungs. They came to be known as the composer’s signature “Rossini crescendos” or “Rossini rockets.” There’s a good example in Act I when the stepsisters, Tisbe and Clorinda, learn about the royal ball. They drive Cinderella dizzy with their super-fast patter commands: “Cinderella come at once! Bring my bonnet and my shoes.”
While her stepfamily chatters away, Cinderella is typically assigned longer and lovelier melodies. Listen for her melancholy ditty that begins with the phrase “Once upon a time.” Little does she know that this song predicts her own fairytale ending! When her dream comes true in the final scene, Cinderella takes center stage for her curtain-closing number, “All of my life I’ve known sorrow and sadness.” Her enormous happiness bursts forth in a somersaulting vocal technique called coloratura the sparkling runs and acrobatic ornaments that are wickedly difficult to sing.
There were already multiple Cinderella-inspired operas around when Rossini composed his version. But his wouldn’t be the last—there are plenty more operatic and musical-theater adaptations of the fairytale for you to explore after you leave the theater. Cendrillon, written in 1899 by French composer Jules Massenet, is closer to the standard Cinderella story. You were probably introduced to the fairytale through Disney’s animated feature from 1950. Seven years later, the songwriting duo Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II created a Cinderella TV musical featuring Julie Andrews; it was remade in 1997 with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother. More recently, in 2016, the British composer Alma Deutscher wrote a Cinderella opera at the remarkable age of ten years old!
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) was born on February 29, 1792, in Pesaro, a seaport in the Papal States, now part of Italy. Both his parents were musicians, and at the age of 14 he entered a music school in Bologna. His first comic opera, The Bill of Marriage (1810), was performed in Venice. In 1813 Tancredi, a serious opera (or opera seria), and The Italian Girl in Algiers, another comic opera, were presented in Venice.
In 1815, Rossini signed a contract as musical director of two opera houses in Naples, agreeing that each year he would write a new opera for each of them. In the succeeding years he wrote many of his best operas, including Elizabeth, Queen of England (1815), The Barber of Seville, Cinderella (1817), and Semiramide (1823).
In 1823 Rossini left Naples and moved to Paris, France, where four new operas were presented at the Paris Opéra, including The Siege of Corinth (1826) and his last opera, William Tell. Rossini retired to Bologna for a time and then in 1855 returned to Paris to stay. There he wrote the Petite messe solennelle (1864) and Sins of Old Age, a collection of pieces mostly for piano that was not published until long after his death.
Rich and famous, Rossini maintained a home in Paris and a villa in Passy, nearby. There he enjoyed life and entertained such visiting notables as the German composer Richard Wagner. He died in Passy on November 13, 1868.
Jacopo Ferretti (1784-1852) was of the most prolific opera librettists of the 19th century. His work was set to scores by composers including Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, Ricci, Rossi, Zingarelli, and Rossini. Ferretti was a master of the written word, and fluent in Latin, Ancient Greek, French and English, as well as his native Italian. But even this was not enough to earn him a living as a writer, and he worked in a tobacco factory for a large portion of his life.
Ferretti’s first libretto, and now perhaps his most famous was actually a very last-minute affair. After multiple rejections, Ferretti and Rossini finally settled on the subject of La Cenerentola for a Christmas opera. Ferretti worked for days to put together his beautiful retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale, rushing to meet the deadline for the theatre manager. Jacopo passed away on March 3rd, 1852 in Rome.
History: Rossini and Ferretti’s opera doesn’t include the magical elements of Cinderella. For example, instead of a fairy godmother, the old philosopher Alidoro helps Cinderella get to the ball. Why do you suppose they chose a philosopher? Research and share what was happening in the world of philosophy at this time (late 18th/early 19th century).
Social Studies: Although La Cenerentola is only one version of the tale of Cinderella, there are also hundreds of others told throughout the world, such as the stories of Ye Xian in China and Aschenputtel in Germany. Research one other version of Cinderella from a culture different than your own, and compare it to the story of La Cenerentola using a Venn diagram. Write and share a summary of what you learned.
ELA: Write your own retelling of La Cenerentola from another character’s point of view, such as the Prince, Cenerentola’s stepsisters, or Alidoro. Write your narrative as a comic, poem, or short story.
This study guide has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.
