This week's opera was Rossini's La Cenerentola, which is a lot of fun. Strong ensemble performance, with Lucia Schwartz Megyesi as Cinderella. It's not an opera that showcases a lot of individual virtuousity, but there are some devilishly intricate quintets and sextets. My guess is it's a lot of fun for the cast, too.
Rossini is probably one of the composers one would like to have supper with. He didn't like supernatural elements though. So instead of a fairy godmother, a pumpkin, and rodent coachmen in livery, we get a wise philosopher/tudor/benefactor and a cohor of clowns pushing around a pimped-up Studebaker and even cooking up a giant spaghetti dinner for the ball. (I wonder if the cast got to eat it after curtain.)
No videos up from this production, so I have to Youtube other productions to point out my favorite bits.
Here in this rodent endowed performance from, I think, Barcelona, starting around 17:00 we get a good debate, alternating between lyrical longing (reminds me of the fabulous accordian music from Amélie) and rapid-fire Italian, as to whether or not Cinderella is going to go to the ball.
And then of course, we have Questo è un nodo avviluppato "this is a tangled knot". How can you not love this? Also, I'm going to start saying Questo è un nodo avviluppato more often when I want to irritate people who are concentrating on a difficult matter.
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