Subscriber Postlude: Exclusive Insights from Emil de Cou, PNB Music Director & Principal Conductor

PNB Music Director & Principal Conductor shares exclusive insights into our production of Cinderella with PNB Subscribers below!

PNB’s Unique Twelve/Midnight Bell Effect

“When I first conducted the production in 2011, I noticed that when the clock strikes twelve in Act II, the only indication in the score was the word “bell” without further information about what sort of bell, or even what pitch! I decided that since this is a fairytale story, the bell should sound magical and otherworldly. To make our unique twelve/midnight bell, we used a computerized sample of a cathedral bell that is played through the house speakers above the stage, combined with a tam-tam (gong) and our principal percussionist, Matt Kocmieroski, striking (very loudly) an emptied tank gun casing [see photo below]. The casing is hanging in the percussion section with the small end down and creates a pitch in Ab. The three sounds are combined to make the effect of a fantastic magic spell. We combine that with two very hard blocks of plastic (in two pitches) for the “tick tock” sound. I instructed our percussionist, Gunnar Folsom, to play them as loudly as possible. He does so while wearing the same protective headgear that they wear on the ground at SEATAC airport. It makes for quite the ending of Act II as Cinderella runs out of the ballroom!”

Added music by Prokofiev

“PNB Founding Artistic Director Kent Stowell added two sections from Prokofiev’s fantasy opera The Love for Three Oranges to Cinderella. The Love for Three Oranges was commissioned by the Chicago Opera Association and premiered in 1921 at the Auditorium Theater (designed by the great architect Louis Sullivan and the first civil building to have full electric lights, completed in 1889). Prokofiev started a US tour after arriving in San Francisco in 1918, and he gave several concerts in Chicago which were very popular. The opera was written in French since Russian was considered too difficult and was a huge hit.

Later, Prokofiev quoted his famous March from The Love for Three Oranges in Cinderella, so Kent added the complete march to introduce the “Theater of Marvels” who entertain the court in Act II. Kent also added the orchestral excerpt “The Prince and the Princess” section from the opera as a dance in the “Theater of Marvels.” It is stylistically and harmonically quite different from the 1944 version of the ballet, but adds a bit of mystery to the score. I love that the additions to Cinderella have a real American connection. Like Carnegie Hall some years later, the Auditorium Theater was set to be demolished in the late 1940’s (having survived partly as a bowling alley) but was saved by Roosevelt University, and today still hosts visiting ballet companies like ABT, NYCB, and others.”