Santa Fe Opera: Cinderella

We’d never seen the Massenet Cinderella before. Now we know why: it really isn’t a very good opera. “Meltingly beautiful,” said the lady behind us on the way out of the theater, but that’s hogwash. It’s a good-natured, undemanding piece of fluff that never quite comes up with a single memorable vocal line.

This left the Santa Fe production company free to do what they seem to do pretty well anyway: performance, byplay, general horsing around. There really is something to be said in favor of a repertory company out here in the middle of nowhere, with time enough to get the ensemble right. Santa Fe did it in all three of the shows we saw, but in Carmen and Magic Flute it didn’t matter: they were good to begin with. Without a good production, Cinderella would be a big yawn. With one, it is a lot of inoffensive good fun.

Afterthought: you’ve got to think Massenet for one resoundingly good artistic decision: he wrote “Prince Charming” as a mezzo. I can only guess at the context in which he made the choice Was it a stretch? Was he being deliberately saucy? No matter. The point is that it worked.