By Kira Ricarte
On Friday, April 4, people gathered in front of the Don Buchwald Theater to see the French opera “Cendrillon”, based on the iconic story of Cinderella, performed by The Conservatory of Music and Opera at Brooklyn College. The opera features the Conservatory’s students’ beautiful and poignant vocals and the stirring and enchanting orchestral music played below. While the singers sang entirely in French, the translation was shown in the supertitles above the stage, operated by Christopher Divencenzo.
Among the attendees were Paul DeCoster and his wife, Raquel Irizarry, the latter of whom is a BC alum.
“I’m looking forward to seeing some great costumes. Looking forward to seeing…some new music I haven’t heard before and just looking forward to [seeing] what the kids are doing these days in the theater, in Brooklyn College,” DeCoster stated in an interview with The Vanguard. This sentiment was shared by Irizarry, who was “looking forward to [seeing] what they’ve done with it,” regarding the modern interpretation of the classic story.
The Conservatory of Music’s production of Cendrillon, first created by French composer Jules Massanet in 1899 to a French libretto (the text accompanying the musical work) by Henri Caïn, takes place sometime in the early to mid-20th century, with the costume designs by Clara Fath based on 1920s fashion.
Cendrillon depicts Lucette–performed by Dominican soprano and graduate student Laura Virginia Pernas–the neglected daughter of an aristocratic family led by her stepmother, the glamorous and ambitious yet vicious Madame de la Haltière. While Lucette’s stepsisters, Noémie and Dorothée, get to eat chocolate and wear quirky bright green and pink ensembles, Lucette wears a white maid’s cap and a robin’s egg blue shift with a pink apron. She is never acknowledged as one of the family except by her father, Pandolfe, who is Madame’s 2nd husband (this opera is one unusual version of Cinderella in which her father stays alive).
Even then, Pandolfe, played by baritone and graduate student Chisom Maduakor, is for most of the opera’s tale, unable to stand up to his wife, calling Lucette “Cendrillon” (meaning “cinder girl” in French) just like the rest of the stepfamily. He also leaves her behind with said stepfamily when they get invited to the royal ball to get introduced to le Roi (“The King”) and “le Prince Charmant” (literally “Prince Charming”).
Except this Prince Charmant, played by music performance graduate student and tenor Aaron Wilson, is a miserable man deep in grief due to his mother’s death. He yells at his odd servant to be left alone and seeks to find a romantic partner who could end his heartache and loneliness, which he describes as “a spring without roses”. When Prince Charmant sees Cendrillon at the ball, he is immediately besotted, praising her effusively with compliments like the “queen from heaven.” Only for him to become devastated and forlorn when Cendrillon, masking as “l’inconnue” (“a woman of mystery” or “the unknown one”), leaves him without being able to tell him why at the stroke of midnight.
The overall romance between Lucette and Prince Charmant is wonderfully rich with angst and the shared, deep yearning to be seen, comforted, and loved by the other. This is especially true in Act 3 when they both head to the forest–both deeply heartbroken, grieving, and alone–where they are blinded by the fairies and brought to the fairy godmother (called “La Fée” or “The Fairy”).
There, Lucette planned to die by suicide after hearing from her stepmother that Prince Charmant loathed her after she departed, only to change her mind after hearing Prince Charmant plead for an end to his misery. Lucette then cries to La Fée, who was nonchalantly bathing with silver tinsel, to spare the prince’s misery by letting her take his burden.
In return, the prince asks for Lucette’s name, which she gives, and they both beg to be able to see each other again. Prince Charmant then vows to love Lucette always, literally giving his “bleeding heart” to La Fée until he sees Lucette once more, which La Fée accepts as an exchange, before sending them to sleep and to “believe in dreams”. The latter piece of advice becomes quite salient in Act 4, when Pandolfe tells Lucette, after she wakes up months later, that her entire night at the ball and the forest was all in her head.
The set, designed by MFA Theater student Riley Lathrom, depicted a white staircase with black swirls decorating the wall and the door underneath it. The singers used it as a means to get in and out of scenes, disappearing as they reached the top of the staircase and appearing as shadowy figures as they ascended from upstage. The staircase was an adaptable feature, as scenes shift from Cendrillon’s house to the royal ball to the forest where La Fée resided.
A large red coffin also fills the scenes, letting death take a backseat role in this fun and bright opera, before being converted to a bathtub for La Fée in Act 3, when the play becomes darker and more otherworldly. But the triumph of Lathrom’s genius, heightening the dreamlike whimsy, brightness, and wonder that this opera is filled with, is the appearance of a shimmering disco ball cascading down on stage left whenever La Fée appears, letting the audience know it is a time for magic.
As stated previously, the costumes were designed by costumer, stylist and fabricator Clara Fath. Fath’s designs, which BC alums Andrea St. Louis and Leticia Moreno assisted in constructing, are vibrant, whimsical, and spectacular, and most of them were, according to an interview with Fath and The Vanguard, “locally sourced or upcycled.”
For her research for her costumes, Fath stated, “I used the Brooklyn Public Library, checked out every 1920s fashion book and went from there.” She also took inspiration from what she found in NYC’s Garment District.
For Madame de la Haltière’s costume, Fath wanted to “make her look scaley but also grandiose”. So, she found some bold, patterned rayon fabric that would make Madame’s cape. Fath continued on about Madame’s floor-length dress, saying, “The dress actually came from my lobby and was this mother of the bride beige. I dyed it to the acidic yellow gold that was on stage.”
When asked which costume was her favorite, Fath admitted that answering the question would be hard, before saying, “It’s probably Cendrillon’s dress that she wears to the ball.”
Fath goes on to explain the process of making her dress. According to La Fée to her fairy servants, Cendrillon’s dress should be made of moonbeams, the “quiet wonder” one feels looking at the stars at night, and all the colors of the rainbow. So, Fath made it out of a delicate light blue and white changeable chiffon, with 4 ombre tulles dyed in pale rainbow hues. She also added silvery sequins and beading “to add the sparkle of the stars”.
With her crystal-studded magic slippers, glimmering silver tiara and necklace, and the diaphanous blue fabric complementing the singer’s auburn hair, Pernas’s Lucette looked quite the “divine princess” whom Prince Charmant describes her as.
But La Fée’s costumes, as well as La Fee herself, performed by soprano and graduate student Gianna Terranova, were the real showstoppers of the night. In Acts 1 and 2, La Fée appeared like a showmaster, wearing a sparkling long black jacket, a stylish black top hat, and dark brown pants.
In Acts 3 and 4, La Fée appears wearing a silvery gray glimmering jacket before revealing a sand-colored glittering gown that she wears when she sees Lucette and Prince Charmant together. Donning these outfits, Terranova’s La Fée is a tour de force of a powerful, mysterious fairy with a bevy of servants who, while visibly unaffected by human emotions, nonetheless sets the scene for Lucette and Prince Charmant to act on their desires for potential love and happiness. The rest is up to them.
Overall, The Conservatory of Music’s Cendrillon was delightful, splendid, and sublime, leaving people spellbound on a lovely April night, as they gathered to see an old story told anew. One where an unlucky girl can put on a pair of magic slippers one night and see her dreams finally come true.