★★★★☆
Stefan Herheim is the hot director whom all opera companies want to work with, but his previous productions I’ve seen are burdened with a great sense of teacherly purpose. His Bayreuth Parsifal and Les vêpres siciliennes for Covent Garden had big points to make, to the point of preachiness; so what made this sparkling Opéra de Lyon La Cenerentola special was the magic ingredient that has been missing from his stagings to date: fun!
Herheim and his designer, Daniel Unger, create a beautiful storybook world in which the action can unfold in a straightforward way, with flamboyant multicoloured costumes and marvellously flexible sets, which encompass Cinderella’s fireplace, a fantasy townscape and even a fairytale castle. Alongside this, however, there is a deeper question about