Monteverdi and Prokofiev

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Two of the shows I added to my London experience were a ballet (the brilliant Matthew Bourne’s version of Cinderella, with music by Prokofiev) and an opera (the ROH version of Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses).



The Monteverdi was musically lovely but disappointing in every other way. It was very much in the round, produced in the somewhat cavernous Roundhouse in Camden, a former railroad roundhouse converted to performance space. The orchestra was placed in the very center, surrounded by a doughnut-shaped stage. Both revolved, at varying speeds, in opposite directions. Something about the passage of time perhaps? It was silly, but I did enjoy seeing different angles of the band, with its theorbos and cornets, since what was happening on the concrete-colored donut was never very interesting.



It was sung in English and in modern dress, though “dress” seems a bit overstated as a description of the tedious sweatshirts and fatigues that dominated.



In truth, nearly the only part of the staging that was not static was incoherent. The director has brought in a chorus of migrants in Act I. That may be a fine impulse, but it felt quite silly to watch Penelope distribute bread and pour water into their water bottles. And the director never clearly differentiates the migrants from the suitors. That’s not silly, but criminally oblivious. Is Ulysses killing the migrants along with the suitors? It sure looks like it.



It’s a pleasure to report that, in contrast, Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella was beautifully conceived and executed.



I’ve read that Prokofiev was meticulous in his stage directions for this ballet. If so, Bourne has surely ignored every single direction. This Cinderella is set in London during the blitz of 1940, which strikes me as an inspired decision. Prokofiev worked on the score from 1940-1944 and it feels appropriately colored by the presence of tragedy.



It took me a while to figure out the sound, which was extremely good. There’s no live orchestra, but Sadler’s Wells has apparently been equipped with surround sound, and Bourne specially recorded the score with a 60-piece orchestra, complete with the sounds he wanted of the blitz—bombers overhead, bombs occasionally landing nearby, and at the end of Act II a direct hit on the scene we’re watching.



Bourne has added to the all-female family of the traditional story a neglected father in a wheelchair and three brothers (one gay—he finds his love, too, at the “ball”). The Prince is a lightly bandaged airman, apparently home on convalescent leave. And the fairy godmother has become a man, a great silver-haired, silver-attired angel. A benevolent presence, yes, but I couldn’t help thinking, too, of an angel of death.



The ball in this version is a party at Café Paris, a real café in Soho that was famously destroyed during the blitz. At the beginning of Act II, we see the destroyed café behind a red scrim, dead bodies splayed on overturned tables. And suddenly it comes back to life: walls reform, tables stand up, dancers come to life. The scrim lifts and we are at the party where Cinderella will meet her prince.



And at the end of Act II, we see the café bombed in a terrifying experience of destruction. Cinderella is carried off to a hospital on a stretcher.



Act III is meant to be the prince’s search across the globe. Here, the injured airman searches the Underground and the Thames embankment, where he encounters prostitutes and thugs who beat him up and send him to the hospital where, eventually, the two are reunited.



If it sounds dark, it isn’t quite. It’s still a fairy tale, one that makes very real the fragility of life and love. And the happy ending is just that, but it’s an ending tempered by a real feeling for how ephemeral it all is.

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