Fascinated from the age of five by Georges Perrault’s Cinderella, seen in a book illustrated by Gustave Doré, and passionate about the music of the 19th century, the French director, Laurent Pelly, mixes seamlessly dreams and reality, humour and darkness in this production which pays homage to the virtuosity of Massenet. After his splendid Don Quichotte two years ago he is back at La Monnaie with a production that was highly acclaimed at Covent Garden last Spring.

After Don Quichotte in 2010, here you are again at La Monnaie putting on another of Massenet’s operas. What is it about this composer that so appeals to you?
I am very drawn to 19th century French culture. It is with the plays of that time, particularly the comedies, - Feydeau, Labiche, Courteline and then Henri Monnier and George Ancey, and more recently the work of Victor Hugo, - that I began my career as a director. For my first efforts at opera I chose Offenbach, the quintessential epitome of a 19th century composer. These operas were very much of their time, whether from a political, social or cultural standpoint. After that I directed La Traviata, Le Roi malgré lui by Chabrier and Don Quichotte. Following the success of some of these productions I was again asked to work on the French repertoire and particularly that of the 19th century. I first tackled Massenet‘s Cendrillon, putting it on in Santa Fe in 2006. My Don Quichotte at La Monnaie was followed swiftly by Manon at Covent Garden, a production that is to be revived at the Met and La Scala. What really fascinates me about this period is the transition from, on the one hand, tradition and classicism and to,on the other hand, innovation. In Cendrillon, and other works by Massenet, musical audacity goes hand in hand with very melodic writing. Sometimes the score is close to musical comedy – certain passages are very whimsical – but sometimes the libretto and the music are marked by darkness.

Has your vision of Massenet evolved since Santa Fe? Have you changed a lot in this production of Cendrillon, for example with the set?
The set will be smaller than those at Covent Garden and Santa Fe! But apart from that the changes will be negligible, for it is really the music that dictates the directing. But my idea of Massenet has certainly moved on. When I first started work on Cendrillon I knew very little about the composer. I was afraid of it appearing kitsch but I very quickly understood that his opera is very theatrical: every movement, every thought seems to be already there in the music. As a result of this, we have chosen to emphasise the storytelling aspect: the set is designed as a fairytale book in black and white, with characters that appear to have been cut out from the pages with very clearly delineated body movements.

It’s not by chance that you pay so much attention to the literature and the writing, is it?
When I started working with Barbara de Limburg - Cendrillon was our first joint project – I mentioned an old family book I had read as a child at my grandparents’ home. It was a version of the Perrault fairy stories illustrated by Gustave Doré. When you are five or six years old it’s the kind of book that leaves its mark on you: big and heavy, with a red and gold cover and splendid illustrations. I can still see the wolf with grandma’s mobcap on his head, Cinderella coming down the staircase, the story of Peau d’Âne… This book was the basis of our set design, a large book of fairytales which opens and whose pages multiply endlessly. We play with the pages; the costumes are inspired by the colour of the cover, the black and white tones of the ashes and the writing on the pages. “Once upon a time” – everything flows from that phrase. Massenet’s version of Cinderella is fairly special, that is to say until the end of Act Two the story unfolds in a fairly conventional manner, even if Cinderella’s father acquires more importance in the opera than in the original story as we know it. The libretto follows a fairly classical schema: the appearance of the Fairy Godmother, the carriage, the ball, the glass slipper, the twelve strokes of midnight… Acts Three and Four, on the other hand, are very different. It is only at the very end when the Prince arrives for the trying on of the glass slipper that we get back to the Cinderella story we all know. At the end of the ball scene the opera takes an extraordinary turn: the Ugly Sisters and the Stepmother tell Cinderella a pack of lies about the evening, implying that the unknown girl was totally rejected by the Prince. These allegations make Cinderella so unhappy that she decides to run away. Arriving in the Fairy Godmother’s wood, she meets the Prince who is also in a state of great distress. There follows a strange scene in which the Prince offers Cinderella his heart. After this meeting (a dream?), Cinderella is found unconscious in the forest and taken home.

The libretto doesn’t really explain whether this is a dream or not, brought on by delirium, does it?
In fact, her father convinces her that it was all a dream, but we are not sure about his motives. In this part the libretto reflects on the family and a moral very different from that in the original fairytale. Cinderella is the most changed and adapted fairytale in the world. There are very old African and Asian versions. I prepared myself mostly by re-reading the traditional tales. Above all I wanted to tell the story seeing it through the eyes of a child particularly for the set and the costumes.

So which do you favour in Act Three – the dream or the reality?
The dream, of course. Moreover in certain scenes we have deliberately chosen to underline their dreamlike nature. That is the case in the first scene with the Fairy Godmother and the fairies: they are not little creatures with wings but the doubles of Cinderella. When they are all together the spectator can no longer distinguish the real Cinderella until she reappears dressed in her ball gown. Moreover even the Fairy Godmother can’t find her because the fairies are disobedient … A spiteful aspect is added to the dream, which I like. In Act Three, in the scene in the forest, the forest becomes a forest of chimneys with smoke coming out of them, as if we were up amongst the roofs of a big city. Everything points in the direction of a dream. This in no way detracts from the wild romanticism of some of the preceding scenes – notably the duet of Cinderella and the Prince in Act Three, which is, at the same time, both extraordinarily beautiful and extremely dark. What a contrast to the pomp and circumstance of the ball or the frantic scurrying to and fro of the servants at the beginning of the opera! Even if Massenet writes caricatured scenes he achieves a great theatricality in the music.

That is perhaps what constitutes one of the qualities of this work – the theatricality and the mix of styles. Do you think Massenet pulls off the comic aspect?
Yes I do. Moreover this line between the darkness and the humour is what I consider my hobby-horse. In Cendrillon, Massenet moves from one to the other with daring and originality. The character of the Prince is a good example of this. In the opera he is seen as a melancholic and very unhappy young man! We had great fun developing the excessive side of his character, that of a spoilt child: we see him as an adolescent who could go too far. At the same time his first aria is truly marvellous. You have to play with this contrast. The second cast to perform in Brussels will contain a peculiarity: the Prince will be played by a man rather than a woman as is normally the case in this work.

That will considerably change the character of the Prince-Cinderella couple, won’t it?
The tenor and soprano version is quite different from the mezzo and soprano version. The idea of the Prince as an adolescent works very well with two female voices; with a man’s voice we will have to find something else. The most important thing in this production is the magical aspect, to see it through the eyes of a child and for the audience to share that vision.

Interview by Marie Mergeay