In the opera Cinderella, the Prince is named Don Ramiro while the Cinderella character is called Angelina. There is no Fairy Godmother, rather a tutor and mentor named Alidor. The wicked stepmother is replaced by a wicked stepfather named Don Magnifico. The prince’s parents are not part of the story.
And, in perhaps the most a surprising departure for modern audiences, instead of a glass slipper, a pair of bracelets takes their place. According to the Houston Grand Opera which is mounting this production, “Censors at the time of the opera’s 1917 premiere in Rome would have never permitted a woman’s bare foot to appear onstage.”
This is tenor Jack Swanson’s fifth time to play Don Ramiro in Cinderella with music by Rossini and a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti. Clearly he’s one of those “tried and true” performers that opera houses look for and count on. As he’s well accustomed to doing, he actually takes on two roles in Cinderella: the Prince pretending to be his own servant Dandini (so he can discreetly survey potential brides) and then reverting to his true self as the Prince.
“Essentially in this opera, most of the opera he’s actually playing his servant because the goal of the Prince is that he meet someone that falls in love with him for who he is and not for his money.”
“He’s essentially your standard prince because he’s probably a bit spoiled, a bit entitled but he does at least have this one important thing because he knows that people will treat him this way because he is wealthy and important.”
And, of course, what makes this role even more challenging is Rossini’s music, Swanson says,
“He asks a lot of his singers. He writes a very wide range both from low to high; you need to be able to sing soft, loud, and the trademark of Rossini I would say are his coloratura passages, the extremely fast notes that you have to fit into difficult meters of time,” he says. “That’s something that has come naturally to me as a singer and something that I always continue to work on.
“I have that range and I have that coloratura and I suppose that puts me at a good advantage for that type of role.”
Other principal cast members include mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonardo (Maria in HGO’s The Sound of Music in 2024 and Charlotte in Werther in 2022) as Angelina, baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Don Magnifico, baritone Iurii Samoilov as Dandini, bass-baritone Cory McGee as Alidoro, soprano Alissa Goretsky as Clorinda and mezzo-soprano Emily Treigle as Tisbe.
Like many opera singers, Swanson (he performed the role of Fenton in HGO’s Falstaff in 2023) began singing in church and choir, beginning when he was 6 years old. He remembers one time when he got a recording of Pavarotti singing “Vesti La Giubba” (Put on the Costume) from Pagliacci. “I had these big headphones on that I had gotten for Christmas. I rewound the big section of that aria maybe 30 times going how the heck does this guy make those kind of sounds?”
At 17 he started studying voice and opera while he was still in high school. “For me at the beginning, the hard part was the stage stuff. I had not been on stage a lot. I was very awkward. I felt uncomfortable being in front of people. So what I really needed was somebody to guide my voice but I also needed a lot of opportunity to be on stage.” he says.
He grew up in Minnesota and went to the University of Oklahoma for undergrad which was the perfect place for him he says, because he got to do two operas a year there. He got his Master’s of Music in Vocal Performance at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Rice.
“Directors nowadays ask a lot of their singers,” Swanson says. ” It’s true that walking out and standing there and breathing and singing the songs is so much easier from a singing standpoint. But you’re able to tell the story so much better if you have a great director who says ‘Look if you can do this’ . . . I walk differently when I’m playing the prince in this show than another opera when I’m kind of playing a young naive kid. Those are important things for singers to realize that the audience immediately gravitates to. The singing comes first. But it’s great if you can tie in all the other elements of theater.”
As the opera begins, Angelina lives with her two stepsisters in the declining mansion owned by Don Magnifico. Ill-treated, she’s called “Cinderella” by her sisterr because of her time spent stoking the fire and otherwise doing all the work that stepsisters Tisbe and Clorinda won’t do.
Alidoro who is Don Ramiro’s tutor, comes to Don Magnifico’s house, disguised as a beggar. Tisbe and Clorinda turn him away, but Angelina feeds him. Later when Don Magnifico forbids Angelina from going to the palace ball along with her stepsisters, Alidoro pops up again, this time providing Angelina with a ball gown, the two bracelets and a coach to carry her there.
What follows, as everyone knows, is kismet.
“He finds the true goodness of somebody and I think that’s not the norm,” Swanson says. “I think he’s used to people pandering to him all the time. And [Angelina] from the get-go sees him and treats him just like she does everyone else even though she is treated poorly all the time because of her position. So I think he first sees her and goes ‘Wow she’s beautiful’ and secondly goes ‘Wow, she’s kind.’ And I think that kindness can go a long way.”
Performances are scheduled for October 25 through November 9 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturday, 2 p.m. October 27, and 11 a.m. November 9 the Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Sung in Italian with projected English. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org.$25-$280.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
