Live from the Met: Roméo et Juliette

My Opera List tells me I have seen Gounod's Roméo et Juliette twice on stage, but the first performance I don't remember at all & the second was deeply flawed (for one thing, they decided to replace a lot of the non-aria parts with Shakespeare's dialogue, even though they had a cast of young singers for most of whom English was a second language – R&J is not an easy play to perform & it was just asking too much of the singers), so I headed out to the Met livecast last Saturday. It was touch-&-go for me until the last minute, as the local rain was heavier than expected, but I did make it to the theater in time – I, normally panicked at the thought of not being in my seat at least 20 minutes before the show starts, was even hoping I would cut it so close I wouldn't have to listen to the ridiculous pre-livecast promos from Rolex & other luxury brands, but there I was, & there they were.

The rain had mostly cleared up by the time I left for the theater, but in New York they were, as Peter Gelb described them during intermission, "torrential", which led to some transmission problems. This was unfortunate & annoying, but also something to take in stride. You know what was really irritating? Listening to the reactions of the audience around me. Much stirring about, loud talking, slow claps (I wonder what that woman thought she was accomplishing), huffing & puffing . . . I had the impression most of my audience thought there was someone in a booth running a projector who could fix things. I don't bother too much with tech stuff but . . . I thought it was generally known the livecasts use satellite transmissions? Which are sometimes interrupted by natural causes? Nothing like an opera audience to make even an aging Luddite feel youthful & tech-savvy.

Irritations aside, I found the show thoroughly enjoyable. It brought to mind last autumn's L'Elisir d'Amore at San Francisco Opera (my write-up is here), in that I can't imagine this opera being given a better presentation. I know people for whom Gounod is a non-starter but I don't have a problem with him. I do have a problem with most Shakespeare operas, but though this one does not capture the strange atmosphere & wild poetry of Shakespeare's play (neither, to my mind, does Verdi's Otello), it does an excellent job of conveying what most people remember or think they know of the play, which is the heightened passion of two youthful lovers, doomed by family hatreds. The plot (& there's a lot of plot machinery in R&J) is pared down: Romeo has poison, but no apothecary who sells it to him.

An adaptation of this sort is going to hang on the two performers in the title role, & here's where the Met came up strong; physically & dramatically & vocally, Nadine Sierra & Benjamin Bernheim were ideal. Both are attractive & youthful looking (they're not going to pass for teenagers, but then R&J seldom do). Sierra has such joy in the role & such commitment to it; as she progresses from a somewhat shy girl, eager for & hesitant about love (at least until she sights Romeo), she sang with splendor & controlled abandon. I had heard her before, but Bernheim was new to me, though years ago I heard a recording of his, I think. He can have a touch of goofiness (as does Romeo) but he is handsome & has great hair; the costumes by Catherine Zuber highlighted his sexiness, with a plunging neckline (his was much lower than Sierra's) & high black leather boots (he could probably use the same costume if he ever sings Hamlet, maybe minus the ruffles on the shirt). He sang with elegant virility & he & Sierra clearly have excellent chemistry together. He is scheduled for the title role in next season's first livecast, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, an opera I much prefer to this one, so I'm looking forward to that.

The secondary roles were also very strong, even though the characters themselves are diminished from their Shakespearean originals; even Mercutio seems subsidiary. He was sung (very nicely!) by Will Liverman, last seen by me in the title role of the livecast of Anthony Davis's X. Frederick Ballentine was an appropriately snarling presence as Tybalt, Samantha Hankey lively in the trouser role of Stéphano (a role built up from the play, actually, in a reverse of the usual cutting-down), Alfred Walker an imposing Frère Laurent. I was glad to see so many Black singers, & very glad to see that there was no attempt to separate the Capulets & the Montagues racially; you see this frequently with productions of Shakespeare's play (one family is white & the other black! or, we're in Ireland & one family is Catholic & the other Protestant! & so forth) & it drives me nuts, as that is not Romeo & Juliet, it is West Side Story. Dividing the families like that gives a cultural/social/political/religious dimension (or even justification) to the quarrel that isn't supposed to be there. The whole point is that there is no reason for the quarrel: it just is, & has been for so long that no one questions it. No origin for the animosity is ever given. It's right there in the first line of the play: "Two households, both alike in state & dignity. . . " The pointlessness is part of the tragedy.

Anyway, no need to ride that hobbyhorse right now. The production is, to borrow the Met's own word, sumptuous, & Yannick Nézet-Séguin was certainly a convincing advocate for the work, for which he had assembled a dazzling cast – almost too dazzling, with too much artistic power, some might think, for the work in question, but, as I said, they were making the best case for this opera that could be made.