A Sydneysider with a globetrotting operatic career and a young family is back in Australia to play Cinderella in Opera Australia’s lavish production of Jules Massenet’s opera Cendrillon.

The production’s title is literally little ashes, from which the English word Cinderella comes. 

Opening at Sydney Opera House on New Year’s Eve, the production is a remounting of French director Laurent Pelly’s English-language staging already seen at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House.

As well as boasting a lavish set and costumes, it’s a highly recognisable version of the story, for Massenet took fewer liberties with the traditional tale by Charles Perrault than his Italian counterpart Rossini when he wrote La Cenerentola. 

When I catch up with Emily Edmonds, who plays the title role, the day before she’s due to go into rehearsals in Sydney, she’s already very familiar with her part and laughs when she considers that some of her actor friends often go into rehearsals without having even read the script, unthinkable to her.

A graduate of Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and Sydney Conservatorium who, in senior school, did a lot of touring with the Australian Theatre for Young People, she has long enjoyed the support of her partner, whose career in media allows him flexibility so that they can divide their time between Australia, Europe and New York.

At age 21, on graduating from the Con, she headed for Berlin, but soon enough scored a spot in the Jette Parker Young Artist Program at the Royal Opera house under a two-year agreement that allowed her to play what she calls “a whole bunch of roles” – 20 to be precise – including in a lot of new work.

She has continued to take an interest in such edgy material and was preparing to perform in British composer Philip Venables’ chamber opera Denis & Katya and for a show in Rome, when covid struck. That forced her and her partner back into “a holding pattern” in Sydney until work started coming back.

Edmonds has a “high mezzo-soprano” voice, perfect for the role of Cinderella but also suitable for Dorabella in Cosi fan Tutte and the pants role of Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, both of which she has played. 

No pants part for her in Cinderella, though – that falls to Prince Charming, who will be shared by Margaret Plummer and Sian Sharp. Instead, Edmonds gets to wear all the beautiful rags-to-riches costumes given to her with a wave of the wand by Aussie operatic legend Emma Matthews, playing The Fairy Godmother.

You’ll recognise all the characters, although Massenet gives them individual names, whereas in the original story by Charles Perrault, only one character, the stepsister Charlotte is ever named.

This is Edmonds’ first role for Opera Australia and it couldn’t be pleasanter – “it’s a show for all the family – a welcoming show”.

It’s not one of those Stephen Sondheim psychological reassessments of fairytales such as Into the Woods, she says, but it is true that there is a kind of symbolism in the narrative.

“It does have a depth of humanity… one thing about fairytales is that they are a kaleidoscope showing us fragments of humanity,” she says.

It has occurred to Edmonds that Cinderella and The Prince fall in love fairly quickly and she says: “If I were telling my two-year-old daughter the story, there’d be a lot of caveats.”

“The story really speaks of abiding hope, the ability to think that things might change for the better and that love can be a driving force in one’s life – it’s much more about that than love at first sight.” 

So, will she be hanging around in Sydney after Cinderella? Unlikely. 

“Travelling is such an enriching part of my life, it gives you some fire in your bones,” she says.

“I grew up with the impression that once you had a baby, you couldn’t do this, but it has not been the case, so if I get an engagement in London, we go and live there for a few months. We’re flexible.”

And yes, their daughter comes too.

Cinderella, Sydney Opera House, December 31-March 28.