The University of Arizona Opera Theater presents “Cendrillon” (Cinderella) by Jules Massenet. The three performances will take place on Thursday and Friday, April 4 and 5, 2019 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. in Crowder Hall. There will be a post-performance talk-back after each show. Please note that the previously advertised Saturday performance has been canceled.
The Arizona Symphony Orchestra will perform under the baton of Thomas Cockrell, music director. Cynthia Stokes is the stage director and Michael Dauphinais is vocal coach. The beautiful costumes and stage set are by Chris Allen and Sally Day respectively. The opera will be sung in French with English supertitles, and the total duration including intermission is approximately one hour and 55 minutes.
CAST
Cendrillon:
Yuchen Luo (Thursday & Sunday)
Chunghee Lee (Friday)
Le Prince Charmant:
Erika Burkhart (Thursday & Sunday)
Shainy Manuel (Friday)
La Fée:
Crystal Kachevas (Thursday & Sunday)
Emma Petersen (Friday)
Madame de la Haltière:
Diana Peralta
Noémie:
Frannie Barrows (Thursday & Sunday)
Rebeckah Resare (Friday)
Dorothée:
Sarah Redlhammer
Pandolfe:
Mark Hockenberry
Le Roi:
David Ingram
L’esprits:
Nannette Avendano
Ashlee Davis
Kelsie Grimsley
Morgan Hardy
Bridget Marlowe
Juliette Young
The Story:
What magic can happen when a poor girl is left behind beside the fireplace while her step-mother and step-sisters attend a royal ball? Massenet’s Cendrillon (Cinderella) is a heroine who is quite a bit different for the storybook counterpart we all know. She is a passionate, determined girl who fights to create her own path…with a little help from some magical friends, of course. Massenet’s fairy-tale opera is filled with a musical atmosphere that fits humor, wit, and deeply lush and romantic melodies into one evening. Cendrillon is both a tender love story and a comedy, with a score that weaves these two different styles skillfully together. From the comedy of the evil and selfish step-family, the beautiful and exciting love story between Cendrillon and her Prince, and the magic of the fairy and her forest sprites, this opera has something for everyone!
The Production:
Imagine a perfume ad with its gilded glamour. With a spritz of an exotic perfume, any woman can become instantly transformed into a stunning, statuesque goddess.
Massenet’s Cendrillon inhabits a world that is slick and glossy. Everything is alluring, but, is anything real? When beauty is our deity, what have we become? This story is dripping in sarcastic social commentary and of true love that exists despite the odds. Can we find love in a world where we hide from ourselves in decadence? This is the world and the questions that are asked of Cendrillon.
Cynthia Stokes, stage director
Stage and opera director Cynthia Stokes has devoted her professional career to creating provocative and thrilling productions across America. Her work has been praised for, “clear storytelling, theatrical sensibility and as having existential depths and evoking mythical resonance,” by the Philadelphia Inquirer; and, “funny and moving…as was the fatal confluence of illusion and reality…” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ms. Stokes is the artistic director of San Diego City Opera, which is dedicated to encouraging San Diegans to see their community in new positive ways by presenting opera in site-specific locations throughout the city. City Opera’s first production, “Queen of Carthage,” a contemporary retelling of “Dido and Aeneas,” was part of La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival. Music critic Jim Chute said,” they got to the beating, beautiful, timeless heart of Purcell’s 1688 masterpiece. Their 45-minute reduction of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” was an inspiration. She staged Dominic Argento’s song cycle “The Andrée Expedition” with three singers in an abandoned factory. Music critic Pam Kragen said, “ Stokes ends the engrossing piece with a surprising and moving theatrical flourish that features a soulful and stylish reunion of the dead and dying. Opera is at its best when it’s visceral, and City Opera’s imaginative conception of the tragic, true story of the Andrée Expedition has proven to be a natural.”
Other directing credits include: Michigan Opera Theatre, Mainly Mozart, The Vermont Opera Project, Rhymes with Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, San Diego Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Cincinnati Opera, Piedmont Opera, San Antonio Opera, Opera Carolina, Opera San Jose and The Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Deeply committed to encouraging the next generation of artists and audiences, Ms. Stokes started La Jolla Playhouse’s Summer Conservatory and San Diego Opera’s Summer Opera Training Program. She is currently on faculty at The Taos Opera Institute and is the Amelia T. Reiman Endowed Chair for Opera Theater at The University of Arizona. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in directing from The University of California at San Diego.
Thomas Cockrell, music director and conductor
Dr. Thomas Cockrell has served as the Nelson Riddle Endowed Chair in Music, director of orchestral activities and music director of the UA Opera Theater since 2000.Cockrell is equally at home on the symphonic podium and in the opera pit, working with professionals or student musicians. Since 2010 he has served as artistic director of Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point, a training company and festival founded in 1950, which he had previously served as music director from 2003-2005.
He has conducted the professional symphony orchestras of Dallas, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Tucson, Louisville and Boulder, as well as several in Romania, Italy, Mexico and South Korea. Operatic credits include productions for Dayton Opera, Opera Colorado, Opera Theatre of the Rockies and Washington D.C.’s Summer Opera Theatre. He served as the associate conductor of Cincinnati Opera, Opera Colorado, The Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Spoleto Festivals and music director of Denver Young Artists Orchestra. He was a member of the conducting faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp from 2006-2008. For the 2014-15 season he served as interim conductor of the Phoenix Youth Symphony, the senior orchestra of one of the nation’s premier youth orchestra programs.
Before coming to The University of Arizona, Cockrell was on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine and the State University of New York at Purchase. He has been a visiting professor at the National Academy of Music in Bucharest, Romania and a faculty artist at the Academie Internationale de Musique, Chateau de Rangiport.
Cockrell earned his Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University. He studied conducting with Franco Ferrara in Rome and at Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. Additionally, he was an Aspen Conducting Fellow and completed advanced training at the Conservatoire Americain in Fontainebleau, France and the Tanglewood Music Center, where he worked with Gustav Meier, Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.
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