Especially if you have seen some very unfunny productions of supposedly funny operas in your life, you cannot be happy enough about this evening. It’s still about (almost) nothing, but brilliantly. Jan Philipp Gloger, Head of Drama at the Nuremberg State Theater, proves with the ensemble of the Nuremberg Opera Department that singers can also act very well; This insight is of course anything but new, but it rarely hits you as comprehensively as it does here with Rossini’s “La Cenerentola”.
We are backstage. Luckily not backstage at Rammstein, but on a TV show called “Marry The Prince”. Stories that take place behind the scenes of shows or performances can often be told cheerfully, here Gloger draws many wonderful miniature figures with love and the help of numerous extras, each of which forms a small story on its own that you can continue in your head. Lots of dads drag their daughters to this “bachelor” marriage act, the first part shows their preparation from behind, the second then the show itself.
Before it all starts, Don Ramiro and his valet Dandini stand in front of the curtain of the Nuremberg State Theater, the prince wants to swap clothes, but it doesn’t work because of the very different physiognomies, a technician comes by, who gives his clothes for a fee, fits. So Don Ramiro takes part in the show of his own marriage as a technician, Dandini enjoys playing the prince. What Ben Connor is not able to achieve vocally, he more than makes up for with his acting – his Dandini takes on the role of prince, plays wonderfully blasé until he flees because Cenerentola’s stepsisters attack him too much. Chloë Morgan is the self-deprecating, down-to-earth country bumpkin, Sara Šetar the arrogant beauty, both very funny and devoid of any vanity.
And: your voices are enchantingly young, as are those of Sergei Nikolaev as Don Ramiro and Corinna Scheurle as Cenerentola. It is a quartet of voices of delightful lightness, free in the design of the crazy coloraturas. In addition, Björn Huestege lets the orchestra race with verve, maybe a little straight-bar, but definitely intoxicating.
The core of Gloger’s theatrical precision work lies in the triangle of Prince, Cenerentola and their stepfather Don Magnifico. Taras Konoshchenko plays and sings it as a diligent parvenu, vacillating between striving for something higher and a lack of understanding for such spheres. Meanwhile, Sergei Nikolaev is a very fine prince with a very big, lyrical heart, Corinna Scheurle is pure joy. Her Cenerentola wears leg braces, can’t walk well, she doesn’t fit into this world of surface beauty (neither does the technician prince), but she is self-confident, self-determined, knows exactly when she’s kissing whom. And then there is her touching, vocal poetry. Lovely.