Happily Ever After? Singing and Dancing Cinderella

Gresham College

May 18

Why has the Cinderella story given rise to so many musical adaptations? From Massenet to Rossini and from Prokofiev to Rodgers and Hammerstein, great composers have turned to the same idea for inspiration. What are the problems with its ubiquity throughout Western culture? What musical ideas have been repeatedly used to depict the story, and what does music convey that words and movement can’t? The lecture ends by considering how Sondheim’s Into the Woods turns the Cinderella story on its head by showing what happens after she gets the prince.