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Cinderella
Opéra Bastille - from 27 November 2018 to 02 January 2019
Cinderella
Rudolf Nureyev
Opéra Bastille - from 27 November 2018 to 02 January 2019
2h50 with 2 intervals
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Pre-opening night : 26 November 2018
Opening night : 27 November 2018
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Matinée Rêve d’enfants : 9 December 2018
About
In few words:
Charles Perrault’s celebrated tale, set to music by Sergei Prokofiev, is transposed to a film set. In a series of references to the heroes of the American cinema, Rudolf Nureyev propels his Cinderella under the spotlights of Hollywood. With a producer for fairy godmother and a star actor as Prince Charming, she escapes her miserable destiny and sees her dreams come true in a story not without similarities with that of the choreographer, the young Tartar who became an international star. With this “ballet‑metaphor”, the Company pays tribute to its former director Rudolf Nureyev. A great production that celebrates the opening of the Paris Opera’s anniversary year.
- Opening
- First part 40 mn
- Intermission 20 mn
- Second part 45 mn
- Intermission 20 mn
- Third part 40 mn
- End
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Cinderella
Ballet in three acts
After Charles Perrault
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Monday 26 November 2018 at 19:30
- Monday 26 November 2018 at 19:30
- Tuesday 27 November 2018 at 19:30
- Thursday 29 November 2018 at 19:30
- Friday 30 November 2018 at 19:30
- Sunday 02 December 2018 at 14:30
- Wednesday 05 December 2018 at 19:30
- Saturday 08 December 2018 at 14:30
- Saturday 08 December 2018 at 20:00
- Sunday 09 December 2018 at 14:30
- Wednesday 12 December 2018 at 19:30
- Saturday 15 December 2018 at 14:30
- Saturday 15 December 2018 at 20:00
- Sunday 16 December 2018 at 14:30
- Tuesday 18 December 2018 at 19:30
- Wednesday 19 December 2018 at 19:30
- Friday 21 December 2018 at 19:30
- Saturday 22 December 2018 at 14:30
- Saturday 22 December 2018 at 20:00
- Monday 24 December 2018 at 19:30
- Tuesday 25 December 2018 at 19:30
- Thursday 27 December 2018 at 19:30
- Friday 28 December 2018 at 19:30
- Sunday 30 December 2018 at 14:30
- Monday 31 December 2018 at 20:00
- Tuesday 01 January 2019 at 19:30
- Wednesday 02 January 2019 at 19:30
Latest update 25 December 2018, cast is likely to change.
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Performances
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Book your tickets today with the Season Pass
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Advantages
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Gallery
Videos clips
Audio clips
Cendrillon
Backstage
02:48’
Video
Stage memories: Valentine Colasante
Etoile talks to us about her Cinderella
© Laurent Philippe / OnP
07:06’
Video
Karl Paquette
Étoile and star
Named "danseur Étoile" in 2009, Karl Paquette bids farewell to the stage on December 31st. From Rothbart to Jean de Brienne, from Romeo to the Firebird, he has shone in all the major repertoire roles. For this, his last production, he chose the role of the Star Actor in Cendrillon, a generous and radiant character. Before the curtain rises, he shares his memories, feelings and plans for the future with Octave.
© Tomasz Lazar / Société Rogues Artist Management Ltd / OnP
Podcast
Podcast Cendrillon
"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" - by France Musique
07’
© Emilie Möri / Vozimage
Article
Where Has the Magic Gone?
What Cinderella owes to Rossini and Nureyev
06’
Spectators of Prokofiev’s ballet, Cinderella, choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev, and La Cenerentola, Rossini's opera directed by Guillaume Gallienne, will be surprised to find neither fairy godmother nor magic wand. Or so it would seem, for the magic has not disappeared: it has just taken on other attributes and – like the prince who can see beyond outward appearances to find the young girl with the glass slipper – those who take the trouble to stop and reflect will find ample recompense for their pains.
When Rossini composed La Cenerentola in 1817 to a libretto by Ferretti, the fairy godmother was replaced by Alidoro, the prince’s generous tutor. Neither pumpkin nor rats have any say in the matter. As for the glass (or is it fur?) slipper which has generated a celebrated controversy, it is replaced by a bracelet, in order, we are told, to avoid shocking 19th century audiences who could not have countenanced the denuding of the performer’s foot as she tried to slip it into the aforementioned slipper. Against all expectations, the story of Cinderella gets on very well without magic; its essence does not lie there, and Bettelheim confirmed that one should see that lavish display of special effects invented by Perrault as a form of irony intended to fool the more naïve of his readers. So be it. In fact, depriving opera of that sort of cardboard cut-out magic incites us above all to seek the real magic in the music. In Rossini, it is this that conveys Angelina’s gradual metamorphosis. Rossini’s heroine knows her classics – which gives her a certain advantage over her sisters – and she has certainly reread the fairy tale, perhaps in the Italian version by Giambattista Basile: during her first scene, the “Une volta c’era un re” that she sings to herself contains both the plot and its denouement:There once was a king
Who tired of being alone.
By dint of searching, at length he found,
But three women wished to marry him.
What did he do?
Disdaining wealth and beauty,
He threw in his lot
With innocence and goodness.
That says it all: ultimately Prince Ramiro prefers innocence and goodness to social prestige. But in this song, which takes the form of a tale, there is neither ornamentation nor floweriness: Angelina’s song is simple and plain. Later, Angelina’s voice takes on increasingly virtuoso and shining colours: at the end of the first act, Angelina finally envisages the possibility of going to the ball. Her vocal lines take wing. Her character acquires a certain grandeur. At the ball given by Don Ramiro, Cinderella appears transformed. Her voice now takes on a noble register, reserved in Rossini for characters of high rank. Hardly surprising that in these circumstances, nobody recognises her. Guillaume Gallienne also aims to transform the cinders into fire by imagining for the finale of Act I a volcanic eruption: the cinders that once seemed to condemn Angelina to misery become the very blaze of her anger. Caught up in a thoroughly Rossinian fire, Cinderella vents her fury almost to the point of collapse. After an act of forgiveness, her only vengeance, Cinderella celebrates her new-found happiness in a final display of vocal prowess. And if all this were but a dream?
Dreams also constitute the marrow of the Cendrillon choreographed by Nureyev, revived this season by the Paris Opera Ballet on the Bastille stage. Here, it is cinema that allows Cinderella – flanked by her alcoholic father and two actress sisters, mediocre extras with no future – to escape her condition, in the tradition of the well-known 20th century myth. In the wake of the crash of 1929 – Prokofiev composed his ballet between 1941 and 1944 – the great Hollywood dream factory provided a form of escapism during the Great Depression. In Nureyev’s ballet, Cinderella, finding herself by chance at the cinema studios, comes across Charlie Chaplin and King Kong before being spotted by a producer on the look-out for talent who casts her in her debut role in front of the cameras. Cinderella owes her success exclusively to her own virtuosity.
Although magic has disappeared, the themes of social advancement, of the passage from one world to another, are, on the other hand, firmly present and haunt this Cendrillon both in its music and its choreography. For Prokofiev, the forties meant the return to the USSR, after his American parenthesis – the composer had exiled himself in San Francisco in 1918 to escape the Russian Revolution. As Nureyev pointed out, “Prokofiev felt heavy nostalgia for the West. Cendrillon is not very Russian.”
As for Nureyev, coming from a modest background,
he had followed a similar itinerary in leaving the USSR for France. One can
easily imagine that he put much of himself in the character of Cinderella. In
these exiles dictated by the vagaries of History, there is doubtless something
extraordinary that far surpasses any form of magic.
© Elena Bauer / OnP
Article
The Pumpkin Coach in Cinderella
A production, a memory
02’
Cinderella
is back on the stage at Opera Bastille. In the ballet choreographed by Rudolf
Nureyev with music by Sergei Prokofiev, the heroine of Charles Perrault’s tale
is whisked off to a Hollywood film studio. Éric Moreau, assistant head of the
props department of Opera Bastille, remembers one of the emblematic elements of
the set, the Pumpkin Cadillac from Cinderella.
“After having been in charge of production, in 2006 I was appointed assistant head of the props department at Opera Bastille. The story behind this set is quite extraordinary. Between the 2011 revival of the production and this one, the container in which the car had been stored had unfortunately got damp. I undertook a little investigation in order to restore the item to its original state. To begin with, we had to redo the upholstery of the seats which had deteriorated as a result of the damp. Water had soaked right in as far as the remote controlled motors, so we had to change them as well. We were faced with a problem, however: this set had been constructed by an outside company. By chance, I found their contact details, which allowed us to restore the famous car from Cinderella.
Its mechanism is rather intriguing. The exterior of
the pumpkin car which, at first sight, looks like the fabric of a blow-up
balloon, was in reality made from thick canvas sewn together and painted, the
same as that used in fairgrounds for the construction of carousels! To get the
right effect, everything is calculated to the nearest millimetre. There is an
extra in the pumpkin when it is driven onto the stage. Beforehand, he has
already started the first motor to pump up the pumpkin. At the moment the
transformation is supposed to take place, he unfastens a strap to release the
controls and presses a button and a second motor pumps up the car in barely 23
seconds! Finally, Cinderella gets into the Cadillac and sets off for the
legendary studios of Hollywood!”
Ce spectacle fait l’objet d’une captation réalisée par Isabelle Julien, coproduite par l’Opéra national de Paris, BelAir Média et Arte, avec le soutien du CNC et de la Fondation Orange, mécène des retransmissions audiovisuelles de l’Opéra national de Paris. Ce spectacle sera retransmis en léger différé sur Arte et Arte Concert le 31 décembre 2018 à 22h15.
Il sera également retransmis avec le concours de Fra Cinéma, dans les cinémas UGC, dans le cadre de leur saison « Viva l’Opéra ! », dans les cinémas CGR et dans des cinémas indépendants en France et dans le monde entier ultérieurement.
Media and technical partners
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Coproducer
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Coproducer and broadcaster
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TV broadcaster
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Cinema Broadcaster
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Distributor TV international
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