Review by Markus Hamence – State Opera South Australia’s Cinderella. Performance date: Thursday 08 May 2026. Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, South Australia.
State Opera South Australia (Celebrating 50 years this year) has just open its 2026 season with Cinderella. And it kicked the door off the hinges, poured a cocktail, threw glitter into the air and reminded Adelaide exactly how fun opera can be when it stops behaving itself.
La Cenerentola feels gosh darn gloriously alive.
Forget the delicate little fairytale wrapped in soft lighting and polite applause. Neil Armfield’s production drags Cinderella into the 1970s and suddenly the whole thing feels dangerous in the best possible way. The production hums with the energy of a city discovering freedom – politically, creatively and socially – and you can feel echoes of old Adelaide woven through every outrageous costume, every chaotic family dinner and every oversized personality stomping across the stage.
The genius of this production is that underneath all the colour and camp madness sits something deeply human. Everybody in this world is chasing something. Status. Attention. Escape. Reinvention. Love. Money. Validation. Rossini’s music races through it all like a caffeinated heartbeat, never allowing the production to sit still for too long.
“La Cenerentola feels gosh darn gloriously alive.”
Markus Hamence
Anna Dowsley gives Angelina a beautiful emotional centre. She doesn’t play her as weak or naïve. Instead, there’s this quiet watchfulness to her performance, like somebody who has spent years surviving everybody else’s noise before finally deciding she deserves her own voice. Vocally, she moves through Rossini’s impossible runs with stunning control, but it’s the emotional restraint that makes her performance linger afterwards.
Around her, the production explodes into theatrical chaos.
Teddy Tahu Rhodes is magnificent as Don Magnifico, swaggering through scenes with the confidence of a man who peaked three decades ago but refuses to acknowledge it. Helena Dix and the supporting cast lean beautifully into the absurdity without ever turning the production into parody. Everybody understands the assignment here: commit fully or don’t bother showing up. And there is no weak link.
Full cast:
Angelina – Anna Dowsley
Don Ramiro – Jihoon Son
Dandini – Nicholas Lester
Don Magnifico – Teddy Tahu Rhodes
Clorinda – Helena Dix
Alidoro – Pelham Andrews
Tisbe- Indyana Schneider
with State Opera Chorus (Complete with mulletts)
“Visually, it’s a feast. The costumes feel ripped from old Adelaide fashion archives after somebody spiked the punch bowl.”
Markus Hamence
Visually, it’s a feast. The costumes feel ripped from old Adelaide fashion archives after somebody spiked the punch bowl. Bold colours clash against textured sets and retro styling, creating a production that constantly feels in motion. There’s no dusty museum-piece energy anywhere near this stage.
And that’s the point.
This Cinderella understands modern audiences don’t need opera to feel respectable. They need it to feel alive.
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra drives the production forward with relentless energy, while the comedy lands naturally instead of feeling forced for accessibility. Newcomers to opera will find themselves pulled into the madness almost immediately, while longtime opera lovers will appreciate just how cleverly Rossini’s work has been reimagined without losing its heart.
“…so well produced and delivered freshly that it would even turn Timothée Chalamet…”
Markus Hamence
By the final curtain, the audience felt less like they’d attended a traditional opera and more like they’d survived the world’s most glamorous emotional breakdown. In fact, so well produced and delivered freshly that it would even turn Timothée Chalamet 😉
Messy. Stylish. Funny. Human.
Exactly what great theatre should be.
Gioachino Rossini
Cinderella
LA CENERENTOLA
Her Majesty’s Theatre
07 May – 16 May 2026
Follow State Opera South Australia on Facebook
