Lyric’s madcap ’Cinderella’ charms with wild costumes, inventive effects

By Kyle MacMillan | For the Sun-Times

Few fairy tales are more universal or enduring than “Cinderella,” with its familiar narrative of a mistreated household servant whose pure heart and humble spirit are rewarded when she meets and falls in love with a gallant prince.

The most famous operatic adaptation, Gioachino Rossini’s “La Cenerentola (Cinderella),” follows the outlines of the fairy tale as most modern Americans know it, minus the glass slippers and clock striking at midnight but with the addition of some farcical and telling hidden identities.

Lyric Opera of Chicago unveiled Sunday afternoon a madcap, wonderfully imaginative and mostly engaging take on this work, a revival of a four-company co-production that debuted in 2007 at the Houston Grand Opera when Lyric’s general director, Anthony Freud, held the same position there.

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This colorful, over-the-top version of the 1817 bel canto opera was conceived by members of the Comediants, a Barcelona-based collective of actors, musicians and artists founded in 1971 by Joan Font, who made his Lyric debut as the stage director.

This conception throws out any notion of a fixed time or place. Instead, designer Joan Guillén’s two-story set is largely a blank backdrop, which is ebulliently animated by lighting designer Albert Faura and all manner of inventive theatrical effects, such as the shadow puppetry and miniature toy carriage that communicate a sense of the prince’s voyage in Act 2 as he searches far and wide for Cinderella.

An especially welcome theatrical conceit is the addition of six ever-present mice who serve as Cinderella’s friends, shift set pieces and props and convey her to the ball. They are portrayed with physical dexterity and unerring wit by six fine actor-dancers with the help of choreographer Xevi Dorca.

But nothing enlivens this production more than Guillén’s delightfully outlandish costumes, kind of Louis XIV meets the Jetsons, and the accompanying Technicolor bouffant hair and sunglasses. Kudos to wigmaster and makeup designer Sarah Hatten, who has a much bigger job than usual here.

The only downside to the otherwise winning staging is that Font’s outsized theatrical antics come dangerously close to overshadowing and even squelching the all-important emotional core of Rossini’s opera – the unlikely love between a servant and prince and the prickly issues of class that go along with it.

Although she started out a bit tentatively Sunday, Isabel Leonard quickly found her footing in the title role of Cinderella or Angelina, as she is known in Rossini’s version, personifying the gentle beauty and shy humility we expect of this character. With impressive vocal flexibility and depth, the mezzo-soprano ably captured the dark-hued, melancholic flavor of the opening aria and brilliantly lit up the coloratura that came later.

Baritone Alessandro Corbelli is a consummate comic actor and a top-drawer Rossini specialist, an unstoppable combination that allowed him to nearly steal the show as Don Magnifico, Cinderella’s loutish stepfather. Displaying similar comic chops and a fine voice as well was baritone Vito Priante, who portrayed Dandini, a servant who becomes quite the dandy as he hams it up in the assumed identity of the prince.

Although he holds his own vocally as the prince, Don Ramiro, and compellingly delivers the character’s big Act 2 aria, tenor Lawrence Brownlee was almost overshadowed at times by the other performers around him. One of the biggest strikes against this production is the lack of a palpable connection between the prince and Cinderella, and much of the blame for that falls on Brownlee.

Diana Newman and Annie Rosen, two promising young singers from the Ryan Opera Center, Lyric Opera’s artist development program, enthusiastically threw themselves into the roles of the uncouth, bratty stepsisters. They open the opera dressed in hilariously absurd full-length white undergarments with bulging, wrap-around bustles. Rounding out the cast was bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, who turned in a first-rate performance as Alidoro.

From the spirited, engaging take on the opera’s overture to the last note, Lyric’s music director Andrew Davis provided solid support in the pit and adroitly managed the opera’s all-important comic pacing.

No bouts of consumption or leaps from the parapet here. Lyric’s “Cinderella” is just plain fun.

Kyle MacMillan is a local freelance writer.