"La Cenerentola" (Cinderella) sings pardon my family, let kindness prevail; Happy Mother's Day

Dandini (Simone Alberghini), Angelina (Elina Garanca), Don Ramiro (Lawrence Brownlee) let kindness prevail

Elina Garanca closed La Cenerentola this morning with a broadcast LIVE from the Met, using the intermission backstage interview to say Happy Mother’s Day in Latvian to her mother. She will also be saying goodbye to her role as Cinderella after a couple more engagements, moving into more romantic and melodic roles. She’s playing Nicklausse the muse, a sort of benevolent guardian angel in Tales of Hoffman at the Met, which will also be broadcast live in HD.

I have her singing with Anna Netrebko in concert in a youtube video. That role too is a triumph of goodness and love, the muse telling the disillusioned poet Hoffman to turn his misery into art, to dip his pen in his tears and write on our hearts.  I was born to sorrow and tears which I suffered in silence, sings La Cenerentola. 

So.  I dedicate this column to fairy godmothers, my own being Aunt Ruth Sims who is 86 and emails me regularly from three thousand miles away.

Happy Mothers Day, Aunt Ruth. 

Indeed Angelina or Cinderella sounds like Hoffman although she isn’t bitter or disillusioned. She does sing, Why must I always be among the ashes? This caught my attention since an English colleague of mine started calling me Cinders. I worked on the crew at a PBS station in New Orleans at the time. Again on her wedding day hand in hand with her prince, she says forgive me for feeling overwhelmed, a moment ago I was amid the ashes and now I’m wedding my prince. She is a picture of humility.

Although she does have a grand wedding with the full chorus in attendance as well as her family and guardian angel, the theme recurs.  I meant to look for SFO's Jeremy Galyon under one of those derby hats.

The theme.  Forego pomp and beauty . . . power and wealth do not compare to choosing love. The prince had even said one doesn’t need to be in love to wed when he first entered Cinderella’s house.

After the ball Cinderella is back in her servant rags singing her song. The Father says to the evil sisters that he has reduced Cinderella to rags to dress up the sisters. If they find out, I’m done for he says, and indeed he was the last in on the comedy. It’s crocodile tears though on his part even then, not remorse for the suffering and cruelty.

Angelina or Cinderella had just begged to be allowed to sing in her servitude. She sings of a lonely king. He will marry the most humble. Her song is of being born to sorrow. Yet her years of singing alone and miserable are to end as fast as a bolt of lightening, like a dream.

Pardon my family . . .

she says to her prince on their wedding day. Let kindness prevail.

She’s so compassionate he sings.

I want to be worthy when I take the throne, she sings, asking him to forgive her cruel family and not punish. She offers them wedding cake. One sister stuffs her face.

Write on our hearts Elina does in La Cenerentola. “She’s so beautiful” gushed a woman behind me at the Century theater, sitting up front near the railing in the theater. This was as Elina went backstage at intermission in her periwinkle twinkling ballgown, the train held by a stage manager. Host baritone Thomas Hampson, who also helped host The Audition from the Met, asked Elina how she connected to the role.

Elina's connection?

You go back to childhood.  It’s the goodness of the story.

Her mother must be so proud of her princess. It’s gymnastics though, she said of the bel canto, coloratura role. She tells Hampson she has to concentrate on the conductor to get the red and green lights. She cannot hear with everybody on stage singing. She had just come off of the rousing ballroom feast scene, where one of the evil sisters would return after turning it into a bit of a brawl. She was still pulling a string of spaghetti out of her cleavage.

Jacques Iselin from Switzerland says he likes the backstage interviews.  You get so much closer than [seeing a performance] in person, even with good seats, he told me during intermission.  Jacques seems to be an angel himself to children in China and he says another group is leaving to perform medical miracles on Friday.  The team operates on cleft palates and cleft lips of children and has performed operations on 1500 kids he says.  It's the Alliance for Smiles at www.allianceforsmiles.org.

She had gone to the ball with the magic of her angel from Heaven, sung by John Relyea who looked strong and tall enough as if he held the powers of the heavens. He had come as a beggar to the household of Don Magnifico and his evil daughters to observe the true character of the potential brides. He peels off the beggars rags after Cinderella has said to him, each of us in rags, we are made for each other. He reveals his angelic white suit and with precision timing, pops up his gold wings as if to delight her. He tells her that her life has changed, that her life of suffering is over.

Even the prince who had come to the house could see her elegance. It came from within even as she shined a dozen pair of shoes. So I disagree with the New York Times reviewer who thinks Elina makes a better Rosina in having an elegant countenance when sweetness and innocence is called for. She looks like your quintessential Disney fair haired princess.  Yet in this production there is no pumpkin coach, no mice into horses, no glass slipper.  Although Berkeley Opera's house wizard David Scott Marley is giving a make over to the fairy tale and renaming it The Glass Slipper.

Similarly, Cinderella sang

Respect, love and kindness will be the qualities of my husband.

Even though he was operating his bridal search under a cruel law requiring him to marry or be disinherited. The law was meant to insure an heir and the perpetuation of the royal family. Am I such a monster? Don Ramiro, the prince, asks Cinderella.  He pretends to be a valet, having his own valet Dandini assume the royal role.

Dandini is a character added to the opera and not in the fairy tale. Steve Smoliar next to me laughed heartily at Dandini’s exclamations when the jig is up.  A Cinderella story in reverse, he sings

I go from playing a prince to a peon

. . . and later lamenting, and now I am an ex!  Dandini does though reveal himself to the evil father Don Magnifico as the valet, somebody who fetches and performs hairdressing. It was a Rossini moment reminiscent of Figaro, an in joke.

But back to that transforming moment when the angel of mercy lowers an industrial strength changing room from a crane into the decrepit mansion for Cinderella. Inside, the periwinkle ballgown to fit the bride to be. She gets hoisted into the air and transferred to royalty who will make better use of her humility and servitude.

For Mother's Day then, let us revel in the innocence of childhood and let kindness prevail.

The Met posts a schedule of all the LIVE broadcasts starting in the fall.

Info:   The Met Live, FathomEvents.com, www.kultur.com, Century Theater, www.SFOpera.com

Photo of Cindy Warner, New Orleans:  Christopher Dominski 

Photos of La Cenerentola:  Courtesy of the Met

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