La Cenerentola, ossia la bontà in trionfo, a playful drama in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti, debuted at the Teatro Valle in Rome on 25 January 1817. Having recently returned from the success of Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini was commissioned by the impresario del Valle to write an opera buffa for the 1817 carnival season. After evaluating and discarding numerous subjects, the composer willingly accepted Ferretti's proposal to set the well-known fairy tale of Cinderella to music. The subject is in fact taken from Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle by Charles Perrault, but also from the opera librettos Cendrillon by Charles-Guillaume Etienne and Agatina, o la virtù premiata by Francesco Fiorini. In the libretto of Rossini's Cenerentokla there are some changes compared to Perrault's fairy tale, including the absence of magical elements in favor of comic and realistic elements. The stepmother, for example, is replaced by the stepfather Don Magnifico, a penniless nobleman who squandered the assets of his stepdaughter Angelina, known as Cinderella, the fairy godmother is replaced by Alidoro, Don Ramiro's wise tutor who will help the protagonist to fulfill her dream of love, while instead of the famous glass slipper a bracelet appears. Completely absent are the mice transformed into horses and coachmen as well as the pumpkin that becomes a carriage. Among the characters, in addition to the sweet Angelina and the prince Don Ramiro, there are the shrewish and haughty stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe, who together with their stepfather tyrannize Angelina, and Dandini, Don Ramiro's servant who in the first act exchanges identities with the prince to test the real interest of Don Magnifico's daughters. Cinderella was written at full speed by both the librettist and the composer, who in just over twenty days signed his last opera buffa, giving yet another proof of his theatrical talent. In Cenerentola Rossini gives us moments of pure poetry, as in Angelina's arias and in the duets with Don Ramiro, and others of irresistible hilarity and ironic verve: the perfect example of this is the final concertatos, brilliant and hilarious clockwork mechanisms of which the Pesarese was undisputed master.

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino staging