Pauline Viardot’s reputation in her day was as a performer: one of the great mezzos of the 19th century, she was the sister of Maria Malibran, whose untimely death after a Manchester Musical Festival vocal sing-off in 1836 is sometimes, rather ill-adroitly, clung to as a distinction in the city’s cultural history. She also lived in a cheerful ménage-à-trois with her husband and the novelist Turgenev.
Atta-girl! She spent much of her time in
the company of the aristocratic and cultured elite, as did most serious
artists, and of course she taught private pupils (ditto, ditto).
Her compositional gifts, though
considerable as befitted someone good enough to take lessons from Liszt, seem
to have been practised mainly in creating entertainment for her own salon and giving
her pupils performance opportunities along the way.
Hence her piano-accompanied comic opera (a
piece with spoken dialogue), Cendrillon, written in the early years of
the 20th century when she was in her eighties.
It’s not Offenbach or Gilbert and Sullivan,
but it’s not very far away. There’s a succession of charming and pleasant ditties,
with some duets and ensembles of which the most notable is a sextet that ends
Act One.
The “Young Artists” of Buxton International
Festival – mainly studying in Manchester’s halls of musical academe – have brought
her adaptation of the Cinderella story back to life, under the direction of
festival head of music Iwan Davies, who accompanies. Director is Laura
Attridge, who has provided adapted dialogue in English though the musical
numbers are sung in the original French (side-titles translate), with design by
Anna Orton, costume design by Michelle Bristow and lighting by Rachel E Cleary.
The story is a mild-mannered version of the
familiar European Cinderella, as told by Perrault and set to music by bigger
names than Viardot. So the sisters are not so much ugly as vain, and not even
very nasty, and Prince Charming appearing disguised, mainly as his own
Chamberlain (Buttons, as we now know him) is simply assumed from the start. Prince
Charming is a woman’s “trouser” role, and the main event at the ball is when
the girls are each invited to sing (Viardot leaves it to the performers to
select their own contributions here, and Iwan Davies has the sisters sing the
Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann, while Cinderella gives us a slice
of Massenet) – though we learn later that dancing came into it, too.
But Cinders’ father really is a Baron Hard-Up,
and Viardot’s text makes much of the fact that he’s not much of a real baron
because he once made his money as a grocer – in trade, my dear!
It’s all frothy and sentimental stuff, and,
on the occasion I saw it, was very well sung by Pasquale Orchard (Le Fée),
Nikki Martin (Cendrillon), Camilla Seale (Prince Charming), Olivia Carrell and
Flora Macdonald (the sisters), Ross Cumming (the Baron), and Andrew Henley (the
Chamberlain).
Further performances are on 16 and 24 July.
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