Richard Bratby

Featherweight fun: La Cenerentola, at Nevill Holt Opera, reviewed

Plus: Royal Opera does justice to Nicholas Hytner’s grand, gloomy, sublime Don Carlo

Perfect summer opera fare: Lorena Paz Nieto as Clorinda, Grant Doyle as Don Magnifico and Nancy Holt as Thisbe in La Cenerentola. Credit: Genevieve Girling 
issue 08 July 2023

‘Goodness Triumphant’ is the subtitle of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and you’d better believe he delivers. It’s the sweetest thing imaginable; true, the stepsisters are awful, but their spite bubbles over in streams of such sunny major-key effervescence that it’s hard to hold it against them. As for their father Don Magnifico, you can’t seriously hiss a villain whose principal ambition is unhindered access to the palace wine cellar. It’s testimony to just how deftly Rossini handles his material that the final scene – in which the now-royal Cinderella asks only that her stepfather address her, for the first time, as ‘daughter’ – can still make you go as gooey as a chocolate fondant.

By Act Five, the Covent Garden audience felt ready to explode; and for once, I was entirely with them

Perfect summer opera fare, then, and a shrewd choice for a company that has to play it safer than most.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in