Victorian Cinderella channels her mum

WHEN Georgina Darvidis takes the stage in Victorian Opera's first pantomime next week, she'll have big slippers to fill

120120 Cinderella

WHEN Georgina Darvidis takes the stage in Victorian Opera's first pantomime next week, she'll have big slippers to fill.

The 22-year-old soprano plays the lead in the VO's production of Cinderella, a role her mother -- Melbourne Opera's Cheryl Darvidis -- played for 10 years in a travelling independent panto troupe.

"Mum would play Cinderella in these productions around Australia, and I'd go along with her to watch," Darvidis says.

"I'd like to say I'm not channelling Mum for this role, but I really am. I think I'm actually sounding like her."

The Victorian College of the Arts graduate, who impressed as Flora in VO's recent production of The Turn of the Screw, says she has lost count of the times she's seen Charles Perrault's classic fable performed on stage.

"Apparently, Mum went into my prep class when I was five or six, and we'd had to write a story about our holiday, and I had written 'I saw Cinderella 16 times'. I loved it. I still love it," she said.

The production, which comes in the wake of successful mini-seasons of children's shows such as the Royal NZ Ballet's Angelina Ballerina and Hairy Maclary at the Sydney Opera House, is the VO's first foray into pantomime.

Music director Richard Gill, who wrote the music and adapted Perrault's fable for the production, says it's time opera companies started changing their outlook.

"Opera companies around the world are facing a difficult time with the art form, and the time has come for us to rethink what an opera company does," he says.

"This production is an opportunity for us to reach out to the wider community -- to people of all ages -- with a very old art form."

Gill says he worked every night between July and November -- around his day job conducting and arranging -- to rework the tale for the stage.

"Panto is constantly moving in and out of itself, so it's really hard to get the balance right," he says.

Darvidis stars alongside Janet Todd, who plays Prince Charming, and Roger Lekme and Julian Wilson as the ugly stepsisters in the Derek Taylor-directed production, which opens at Melbourne's Her Majesty's Theatre on Wednesday.