CENDRILLON Viardot - Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía

A removals company discovers a room full of curiosities among them a book of Cendrillon. What better way for a group of friends to pass the time than to perform this famous fairy tale about Cinderella and the glass slipper? Pauline Viardot’s comic opera in three tableaux from 1904 is seeped in joie de vivre, reflecting the influences of her entourage. As a singer and composer, Viardot was at the heart of artistic life in Paris in the second half of the 19th century, and counted George Sand, Chopin, Gounod, Berlioz, Donizetti among her friends and admirers. Offenbach’s contagious influence also filled Paris at the time with operetta, vaudeville and opéra-comique. Reflecting this wave of dance and joyful songs, Cendrillon is a gentle hedonistic operetta first performed in the composer’s own salon, filled with waltzes, mazurkas and polkas; nostalgic music at a time when atonality was dawning. For their new production, Palau de les Arts in Valencia has cast from the prestigious young talent of their C