A tale told as a tale

French director Laurent Pelly is one of the Royal Opera House’s favourites, one usually called upon to create witty, high-profile productions. His latest show, a rather bland, neither here nor there Manon with Anna Netrebko, was a blip in his otherwise brilliant London career. The expectations for this star-filled Cendrillon were inevitably high and on this occasion Pelly didn’t disappoint. This is in spite of the fact that staging Massenet’s adaptation of the tale is not easy, given the imbalance between the hectic Act 1 and the static Act 2. Cendrillon, the tale, is divided into three main moments: the preparation for the ball, the ball itself and the search for the missing girl who has stolen the Prince’s heart. Both Massenet and Rossini (whose Cenerentola suffers from a similar lack of balance), put the first two parts of the tale in…