The timing could hardly be better.
A day after Prince William and Kate Middleton profess their vows with much of the rest of the world looking on, Opera Colorado will offer its musical take on an even more famous, albeit fictional, royal couple.
The curtain will go up Saturday evening on the company’s latest production of “La Cenerentola (Cinderella),” Gioacchino Rossini’s comic yet achingly poignant 1817 adaptation of Charles Perrault’s famed fairy tale.
While there is no fairy godmother or glass slipper in this version, and a stepfather instead of a stepmother, the opera follows the essentials of the rags-to-riches story that is familiar to little girls pining to be princesses — and just about everyone else.
What sets Opera Colorado’s production apart is that it is reviving a celebrated 1969 staging by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932-1988) that played a significant role in establishing this once-neglected work in the repertories of the world’s opera companies — a Cinderella story in itself.
Opera Colorado rented the well-traveled sets and costumes that Ponnelle created for that production and secured the services of stage director Grischa Asagaroff, a longtime assistant to Ponnelle, to bring it back to life in Denver in his first visit to the company.
Asagaroff, who has served as artistic director of the Zurich Opera since 1991 and will take over the same post with the prestigious Salzburg Festival in 2012, said that Ponnelle’s production captures the spirit of Rossini’s music and brings a well-choreographed sense of movement to the drama.
It manages, the director said, “to be funny but not overdoing the funniness, so the characters still stay characters and don’t get gimmick personalities.”
In restaging it, Asagaroff said, he always tries to stick as closely as he can to Ponnelle’s original intentions, making allowances only for the inevitable differences in the skills and personalities among the singers who take on the various roles.
“I worked 22 years with Ponnelle,” he said, “and I hold his memory up. And I try with the two pieces I still do (of his) — ‘L’Italiana (in Algeri)’ and ‘Cenerentola’ — to keep it as good as it was. And the successes tell me that it’s right to do it exactly this way.”
Asagaroff has restaged the opera 14 previous times in cities ranging from Chicago to Zurich to Tokyo (just two years ago), and no matter where Ponnelle’s staging is done, it inevitably scores with its audiences.
“They get it,” he said. “It’s always a hit wherever it comes. The Japanese loved it.”
If he started inserting his own ideas or tinkering with Ponnelle’s time-tested approach, Asagaroff said, it would only hurt rather than help the production.
“The main staging is the same,” he said. “It has to be. If you start changing it, it starts to fall apart.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“La Cenerentola (Cinderella)”
Composer: Gioachino Rossini
Librettist: Giacomo Ferretti, after Perrault’s tale, “Cendrillon” (1697).
Premiere: Jan. 25, 1817, Teatro Valle, Rome.
Synopsis: This semi-serious opera generally follows the familiar plot of the folk tale, but there is no fairy godmother, and instead of a glass slipper, Cinderella’s true identity is discovered through a matching bracelet.
Principal cast: Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack (Cinderella), tenor Michele Angelini (Prince Ramiro), baritone Daniel Belcher (Dandini), bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos (Don Magnifico), bass-baritone Dale Travis (Alidoro).
Conductor: Timothy Long
Director: Grischa Asagaroff, re-creating the famed staging of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.
Set and costume designer: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.
“La Cenerentola (Cinderella).”
Opera. Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets. Opera Colorado ends its 2010-11 season with a restaging of director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s acclaimed production of Gioachino Rossini’s adaptation of the well-known fairy tale. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Tuesday and May 6, and 2 p.m. May 8. 3 hours, 10 minutes. $25-$155. 800-982-2787 or
