If a musical opened on Broadway and then spawned additional productions in Rome, Milan, London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, and Buenos Aires within a decade, it would be an international sensation, and its extraordinary popularity would most likely be attributed at least in part to the global communications infrastructure that allows for instantaneous sharing of so-called “viral” content. But what about a show that opens in Rome in 1817 and achieves exactly that level of international renown without the benefit of electricity, never mind the Internet?
This is what happened with Rossini’s Cinderella (Italian title: La Cenerentola). Buoyed by the success of the The Barber of Seville in 1816, Rossini and his librettist, Jacopo Ferretti, took the bones of the common fairy tale and created one of the greatest of all 19th-century operas, one particularly notable for providing a mezzo-soprano role of extraordinary depth and complexity that somehow manages to end happily for the heroine. When the Music Academy of the West (MAW) production reaches the Granada stage Thursday, July 30, and Saturday, August 1, Santa Barbara audiences will have a chance to thrill to the same dramatic and musical flourishes that triumphed around the world 200 years ago.
As with any performance of a monumental work of the classical repertoire, this production stands on the shoulders of those who have learned and performed it in the past. In the case of the MAW’s vocal program, those shoulders belong to the redoubtable Marilyn Horne, who, along with such other great divas as Pauline Viardot, Teresa Berganza, and Cecilia Bartoli, is remembered as one of the definitive Cinderellas of all time.