Divested of its traditional attributes – glass slipper and pumpkin carriage – and dominated by a tyrannical stepfather instead of a cruel stepmother, Rossini’s la Cenerentola plays with these most conventional of fairy‑tale characters. Nonetheless Cinderella lives in a closed world devoid of tenderness and under the yoke of the tormentor whom she protects. Deep beneath her goodness smoulders a fire that her encounter with the prince will set free… Guillaume Gallienne subtly highlights the halftones of this dramma giocoso, somewhere between opera buffa and opera seria, and ranging from sombre melancholy to the burlesque.

In the new production of the Return of Ulysses at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées all the ingredients were gathered for a successful show: the music of Monteverdi, a mythological story, a wonderful orchestra on period instruments, baroque specialists like Magdalena Kožená, Isabelle Druet and Katherine Watson, and finally the exuberant Rolando Villazón.