Bel Cantanti Opera Company Season 2017-2018 Cendrillon (Cinderella) an opera with the music by P. Viardot and F. Chopin. Saturday, January 6, at 3:00pm Riderwood Village Chapel Marie, called Cendrillon (Cinderella)…………………………………………………………………………………………..Melissa Chavez Le Baron de Pictordu, her father……………………………………………..……………….…………………………………Eric Gramatges Armelinde, another daughter of Pictordu…………………………………………..….……………………………………. Amanda Staub Maguelonne, another daughter of Pictordu………………………………………..……….……………………………………Evelyn Tsen La Fée (Fairy Godmother)……………………………………………………………………..………………………………………….Joanna Jones Le Prince Charmant………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………………… Joseph Kaz Le Comte Barigoule ( Prince’s valet)……………………………………………………….………………………………Aurelio Dominguez Stage Director: Corinne Hayes, Helen Aberger Stage designer: Ksenia Litvak Chreographer: Runqiao Du Lighting Designer: Marianne Meadows General and Artistic Director, Producer: Dr. Katerina Souvorova About Pauline Viardot Pauline Viardot (18 July 1821 – 18 May 1910) was a leading nineteenth-century French mezzo-soprano, pedagogue, and composer of Spanish descent. She was 13 years younger than her beautiful sister, diva Maria Malibran, but her father made Pauline his favorite and trained her on the piano and also gave her singing lessons. As a small girl, she travelled with her family to London, New York (where her father, mother, brother and sister gave the first performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni in the United States, in the presence of the librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte). After her father's death in 1832, her mother forced her to focus her attention on her voice and away from the piano. She had wanted to become a professional concert pianist. She had taken piano lessons with the young Franz Liszt and counterpoint and harmony classes with Anton Reicha (the teacher of Liszt and Hector Berlioz, and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven). It was with the greatest regret that she abandoned her strong vocation for the piano, which she did only because she did not dare to disobey her mother's wishes. At the age of 17, she met and was courted by Alfred de Musset, who asked for Pauline's hand in marriage. Pauline’s friend George Sand (who later based the heroine of her 1843 novel Consuelo on her) discouraged her from accepting de Musset's proposal, directing her instead to Louis Viardot. Viardot, the director of the Théâtre Italien and twenty-one years her senior, who was devoted to her and became the manager of her career. After her sister Malibran's death, aged 28, Pauline became a professional singer, with a vocal range from C3 to F6. In 1837, she made her opera debut as Desdemona in Rossini's Otello in London, with an exquisite technique combined with an astonishing degree of passion. Viardot's performances inspired composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns (who dedicated Samson and Delilah to her), and Giacomo Meyerbeer, for whom she created Fidès in Le prophète. She spent many happy hours with Sand and her lover Frédéric Chopin. She arranged Chopin’s mazurkas to be performed as songs as well as instrumental works by Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms. She was on very friendly terms with Clara Schumann. She was the mezzo-soprano in the Tuba mirum movement of Mozart's Requiem at Chopin's funeral at Église de la Madeleine in Paris on October 30, 1849. Pauline Viardot sang the title role of Gluck's opera Orphée et Eurydice at Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in November 1859, directed by Hector Berlioz, and she sang this role over 150 times. From the mid-1840s, until her retirement, she was renowned for her appearances in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, an opera with which her family had long been associated. In 1855, she had purchased Mozart's original manuscript of the opera in London. She preserved it in a shrine in her Paris home. In 1889 she announced she would donate it to the Paris Conservatoire, and this occurred in 1892. In 1863, Pauline Viardot retired from the stage. She and her family left France due to her husband's public opposition to Emperor Napoleon III and settled in Baden-Baden, Germany. After the fall of Napoleon III later in 1870, they returned to France, where she taught at the Paris Conservatory and, until her husband's death in 1883, presided over a music salon in the Boulevard Saint- Germain. In 1910, Pauline Viardot died at age eighty-eight. Her body is interred in the Montmartre Cemetery, Paris, France. Story of Cendrillon Pauline Viardot began composing when she was young. Franz Liszt declared that, with Pauline Viardot, the world had finally found a woman composer of genius. Cendrillon is a chamber operetta with dialogue in three acts, based on the story of Cinderella. The work, for a cast of seven with piano orchestration, premiered in Viardot's Paris salon on 23 April 1904, when she was 83, and was published later that year. Historians are unsure of when the opera was actually composed, although it is thought to be after the death of Viardot's friend Ivan Turgenev in 1883 as he did not write the libretto. It has been described as "a retelling of the Cinderella story with Gallic wit, Italianate bel canto, and a quirkiness all her (Viardot's) own." The plot remains relatively faithful to Perrault's original fairy tale, but takes a much more lighthearted approach than the other operatic adaptations by Massenet and Rossini. Act I. Marie (Cendrillon) is the servant in the house of her father, who is a low noble in an alternative reality of France where royalty still existed in 1904. The opera begins with Marie singing a song about a prince wanting to be married but unable to find a suitable wife, only wanting a princess. A beggar calls at the house asking for food and money, and ironically while Marie is off asking her sisters for money, reveals himself to be none other than the Prince, looking for a wife among common folk. Marie returns without anything from her family, but offers the beggar the few coins she has before Armelinde and Maguelonne enter the living room to shoo away the beggar. Marie responds by asking who would clean the house and take care of the family if she was to leave stating she should be at least able to sing her song, which she begins to sing again before being interrupted by another knock at the door, by the Prince again who is this time disguised as his Valet, Barigoule, with an invitation to a ball that evening. The sisters accept and go off to prepare themselves Marie thinks about the Valet who she describes as having a "charm so distinct" while Baron Pictordu wakes up. Marie attempts to greet him as "papa" while he simply rebuffs her by calling her "child." The sisters call Marie away while Baron comments that he isn't feeling well, explaining that he saw a van driving around that reminded him of the time before he was a baron, while he worked as a greengrocer also noting a jail sentence 20 years ago, a past love name Gothon, and "vive la France!" The sisters return after Baron's aria, explaining the invitation to the ball and encouraging their father to get ready. Maguelonne teases Marie about not being able to attend the ball to which she responds that all she wants is to be loved by her family. After the Baron, Maguelonne and Armalinde leave, Marie begins singing her song again, noting how much she wanted to see the Valet again, calling the attention of her fairy godmother, La Fee, who arrives to send Marie to the ball. Staying relatively faithful to the original fairy-tale la Fee turns a pumpkin into a carriage, mice into footmen and a coachman. Marie's godmother reminds her to be back by midnight or the spell would break, while giving her slippers and a magic veil that will turn her rags into a beautiful gown. La Fee sends her goddaughter on her way, and then heads to the ball herself. Act II. Back at the palace, the Prince and Barigoule have switched rolls again for the evening - and Barigoule sings about how happy he is get to be the Prince. The Pictordu family (minus Marie) then arrives and introduces themselves to Barigoule throughout a series of entrees. As the Barigoule attempts to whisk off Maguelonne and Armalinde off to see "his" treasures, the Prince notices another woman needing to be formally introduced. The crowd is taken aback by her beauty before the Prince realizes it is the woman he fell in love with as a beggar and Marie recognizing the Prince as the charming man singing a semi- duet over the crowd. After the Prince and crowd regain their composure, Barigoule proposes an entertainmen: La Fee responds by singing a song, then two sisters follow her example. After their performance, Barigoule asks the guests to choose a dance, to which the guests ask for a minuet. After the dance, everybody leaves for the buffet, while Marie and the Prince have a moment alone. At the end of the duet, the two share a kiss before Marie realizes that midnight has come and leaves abruptly leaving behind a slipper, while the guests sing a rousing (and implicitly drunken) song. Act III. Baron Pictordu awakens in his own house commenting that the Prince, (rather who he thought was the prince), had a remarkable resemblance to someone he once knew. Barigoule arrives thinking the same thing, and revealing that he actually isn't the Prince and that he used to work with Pictordu when he was a greengrocer. They reminisce on their past line of work. Barigoule brings word that the Prince is looking for the lady at the ball who left her slipper, so that he might marry her.