[Met Performance] CID:351313



La Cenerentola
Metropolitan Opera House, Sat, October 8, 2005

Debut : Antonello Allemandi, Simone Alberghini




La Cenerentola (24)
Gioachino Rossini | Jacopo Ferretti
Angelina
Olga Borodina

Prince Ramiro
Barry Banks

Dandini
Simone Alberghini [Debut]

Don Magnifico
Simone Alaimo

Clorinda
Rachelle Durkin

Tisbe
Patricia Risley

Alidoro
Ildar Abdrazakov

Recitative Accompanist
Robert Myers


Conductor
Antonello Allemandi [Debut]


Production
Cesare Lievi

Designer
Maurizio Bal?

Lighting Designer
Gigi Saccomandi

Choreographer
Daniela Schiavone

Stage Director
Sharon Thomas





La Cenerentola received six performances this season.
Production photos of La Cenerentola by Marty Sohl / Metropolitan Opera.

Review 1:

Review of Leighton Kerner in the January 2006 issue of OPERA NEWS

An almost entirely new cast, including two debuts, sparked the return to the Met of Rossini's "La Cenerentola" on October 8. The most attention was directed to Olga Borodina's first New York Angelina. Although general manager Joseph Volpe

told the audience beforehand that the Russian mezzo was not well but would sing nonetheless, she sounded in top form, at least until a slightly gritty high B at the very end of the concluding rondo, "Non pi? mesta." That note hardly mattered, considering her wondrous performance. As expected, her more introverted singing was richly mellow and moving, but her allegro pages had all the agility and accuracy one could want. She also acted the role touchingly and wittily in Cesare Lievi's 1997 production, which is often clever but sometimes silly in its sort of post-Mussolini updating.

Milanese conductor Antonello Allemandi brought much brio but not quite ensemble control to his Met debut. The other company newcomer, Simone Alberghini, as Dandini, began with a rather nondescript bass-baritone but gained impact in Act II and was always a poised comedian. Barry Banks, as Prince Ramiro, endowed our heroine's hero with nice temperament and a secure tenor technique.

Bass Simone Alaimo has added welcome vocal discipline and theatrical taste to his Don Magnifico, and Rachelle Durkin and Patricia Risley sang Angelina's vain half-sisters with solid musicianship but acted a little too goofily. The big surprise was Borodina's husband, bass Ildar Abdrazakov, as Angelina's enabler, Alidoro, whom this staging snakes a real angel rather than a figurative one (The house program's synopsis notes that "Alidoro" is Italian For "wings of gold," so there you are.) Abdrazakov, constantly elegant and benign, brought the house down with "La del ciel nell'arcano profondo," the spectacular aria Rossini wrote for an 1821 revival of the 1817 opera, replacing a briefer, more ordinary number, farmed out to Luca Agolini, who also wrote the present "dry" recitatives.' (Rossini never had time to write those.)



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