BWW Preview: CINDERELLA'S MAKEOVER - Classical Music Seeks a Wider Audience in New Show

Music from a range of popular classics has been adapted for a show that aims to introduce classical music to people who might not generally come into contact with such music.

Cinderella's Makeover, which opens at the Performing Arts of San Antonio on June 10, features music from Leo Delibes, W.A. Mozart, J.S. Bach, Jules Massenet, Carl Maria von Weber, Luigi Boccherini, Edvard Grieg, Josef Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic Chopin, Camille St Saens and Bedrich Smetana.

Smetana's famous "Moldau" - considered by many to be one of the finest orchestral tone poems that musically charts the course of the Moldau River - becomes a song entitled "My Heart Has Learned to Soar" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjxyi5tOcOM).

Grieg's Morning Mood from Peer Gynt is a constant theme and becomes a song called "Wishes Have Wings". Haydn's Surprise Symphony is used for a song called "Where Did Cinderella Go?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPg4g1z3Lnk), while Boccherini's Minuet becomes "A Lesson in Royal Etiquette" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCamuZ_srDc0.

The show is directed by Vaughn Taylor and features Lauren Cole as Cinderella (pictured here with Jef Maldonado as the Fairy Godfather), Douglass Hooker as Horatio, Iyana Colby as the evil stepmother, Logan Magoun and Stephanie Clark as the stepsisters.

In this version of the Cinderella story, Cinderella doesn't marry the prince because he is too obsessed with the size of her feet as he tries to get her to try on a glass slipper that the magician Merlin has told him will fit the girl he is to marry.

Instead of a fairy godmother, Cinderella has a fairy godfather , who brings in a team of stylists who give her makeover and then introduces her to a handsome courtier named Horatio, who rescues her after her evil stepmother sells her to some slave traders (whose trademark is "Slaves 'R' Us").

The show runs for three weekends from June 10. The theatre is now offering assigned seating so early booking is advised to get the seats you want. Telephone the theatre on (210) 557 1187. Seats can also be bought online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2502011.

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