Event Details

by Charles Gounod

Opera Screening

An NCPA-The Metropolitan Opera (New York) Presentation

Perhaps the most enduringly successful of the many operatic settings of the world’s consummate love story, Roméo et Juliette is an excellent example of French Romanticism, a tradition that values subtlety, sensuality and graceful vocal delivery over showy effects. In the opera there is a slight shift of focus away from the word games of the original play and a greater focus on the two lovers, who are given four irresistible duets, including a brief final reunion in the tomb that does not appear in the play. Charles Gounod showed early promise as a musician and achieved commercial success with his opera Faust in 1859. In Shakespeare’s lifetime, Italy was a land of many small city-states in constant warfare with one another, but this same country was also the cradle of the Renaissance, with its astounding explosion of art and science. The
image invoked by the story’s setting in the ancient city of Verona, then, is a beautiful but dangerous world where poetry or violence might erupt at any moment. The Met’s production moves the action to the 18th century. Gounod infuses this classic drama with an elegant musical aura that reflects the soaring poetry of the original. When the composer explores the darker and more violent side of the story, his music creates drama without resorting to bombast. A reserved melancholy creates all the necessary tension. For the story’s more light-hearted moments, Gounod supplied the sort of buoyant melodies that made Faust a huge hit with audiences. Midway through Act I, the heroine takes the stage with the giddy coloratura gem ‘Je veux vivre dans ce rêve’. Moments such as these add musical and dramatic texture to the tragedy, admired for its contrast of light and dark.

Conductor: Yannick Nézet Séguin
Cast: Nadine Sierra, Samantha Hankey, Benjamin Bernheim, Will Liverman, Alfred Walker, Eve Gigliotti & Frederick Ballentine

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