Love at first sight in HD
Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette, 15 December 2007.
Readers may already have read of my captivation by this new medium for the enjoyment of opera (Cinéma Vérité)), consolidated by this most recent experience of this new form of opera going, different, not necessarily inferior, to the ‘real thing’. You do not have to travel to New York (or Milan or Vienna) to see, as they perform, the world’s greatest singers in the world’s most polished productions. Instead, from a comfortable numbered cinema seat (an innovation this,
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with a host of ushers locating the seat from the minute printing on the ticket), you enjoy a full view of the large screen and of the subtitles without moving your head. The experience of the singing and the acting is different. It is astonishing to realise that, while the cinema viewer is enjoying the intimacy of the singers in close up, at the same time they are projecting their voices into the vastness of the Met auditorium. During the evening one gains insight into the mechanics of opera production. Cameras on stage reveal the singers slaking their thirst after the curtain has fallen. One can admire the clockwork precision of the stagehands in tight changes of scenery. During the intermission, interviews with the principals add to the entertainment and instruction. Of course, everything depends on the quality of the sound and vision. The former is very good though not perfect; the ‘high definition’ is superb, except for an occasional blip when an intrusive warning occurs, though on previous occasions the picture or sound has been lost occasionally.
Gounod follows Shakespeare closely, with some economies and changes of emphasis to the telling of the story in operatic form. Thus, after a prologue for chorus reviewing the story we go straight into the Capulet’s masked ball marking Juliet’s birthday, with a malevolent Tybalt as master of ceremonies. Roméo enters with a party of gate-crashing Montagues and falls for Juliette, leading to the garden scene in Act II.
In the first scene of Act III they are wed by Friar Lawrence, followed by the drama of the confrontation in which Tybalt kills Mercutio and is himself killed by Roméo. In the opera the fight arises by Mercutio coming to the help of Roméo’s page, Stéphano (a trouser role – replacing Balthasar of the play) who has provoked the Capulets to distract them from Roméo’s departure. Roméo is banished - end of Part I!
Long before the intermission, the superb quality of the music, of this production by Guy Jooston and of the singing and acting have established themselves – there are no weak links. The music is familiar with one well-known melody following another, known from ‘excerpts’ sung in recital and popular concerts but here heard in context for the first time. The direction of ball scenes, of the fighting crowds and of the more intimate exchanges is immaculate, enhanced in the cinema by judicious use of long-shot and close-up.
Of the supporting singers I single out the Tybalt of Marc Heller for his stage presence as leader of the Capulets, Charles Taylor and Robert Lloyd for their character-acting as the elderly Capulet and Frère Laurent respectively and the soprano Isabel Leonard, with great personality in a marvellously athletic and beautifully mockingly sung Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle?, as Stéphano.
The conductor was Placido Domingo. The stars were Anna Netrebko as Juliette and Roberto Alagna as Roméo. Both were in fine voice; both gave convincing dramatic portrayals as young lovers, disguising the generation gaps between each other and their roles (though Netrebko did not capture the tenderness of teen-age love as enchantingly as did Renée Fleming as Tatiana as also seen Live in HD in Eugene Onegin).
Part II focuses on the young lovers and the tragic denouement. It begins with their awakening after the wedding-night, intimately portrayed in close-up to the cinema audience. This being opera, they die together after a final duet, Viens, fuyons au bout du monde, Roméo of poison, taken after finding Juliette apparently dead and she, revived, stabbing herself.
This version of the age-old tragedy did not fail to move, set out in the background of family rivalry in its social setting authentically depicted. An operatic experience deserving of its world-wide audience.
Gounod follows Shakespeare closely, with some economies and changes of emphasis to the telling of the story in operatic form. Thus, after a prologue for chorus reviewing the story we go straight into the Capulet’s masked ball marking Juliet’s birthday, with a malevolent Tybalt as master of ceremonies. Roméo enters with a party of gate-crashing Montagues and falls for Juliette, leading to the garden scene in Act II.
In the first scene of Act III they are wed by Friar Lawrence, followed by the drama of the confrontation in which Tybalt kills Mercutio and is himself killed by Roméo. In the opera the fight arises by Mercutio coming to the help of Roméo’s page, Stéphano (a trouser role – replacing Balthasar of the play) who has provoked the Capulets to distract them from Roméo’s departure. Roméo is banished - end of Part I!
Long before the intermission, the superb quality of the music, of this production by Guy Jooston and of the singing and acting have established themselves – there are no weak links. The music is familiar with one well-known melody following another, known from ‘excerpts’ sung in recital and popular concerts but here heard in context for the first time. The direction of ball scenes, of the fighting crowds and of the more intimate exchanges is immaculate, enhanced in the cinema by judicious use of long-shot and close-up.
Of the supporting singers I single out the Tybalt of Marc Heller for his stage presence as leader of the Capulets, Charles Taylor and Robert Lloyd for their character-acting as the elderly Capulet and Frère Laurent respectively and the soprano Isabel Leonard, with great personality in a marvellously athletic and beautifully mockingly sung Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle?, as Stéphano.
The conductor was Placido Domingo. The stars were Anna Netrebko as Juliette and Roberto Alagna as Roméo. Both were in fine voice; both gave convincing dramatic portrayals as young lovers, disguising the generation gaps between each other and their roles (though Netrebko did not capture the tenderness of teen-age love as enchantingly as did Renée Fleming as Tatiana as also seen Live in HD in Eugene Onegin).
Part II focuses on the young lovers and the tragic denouement. It begins with their awakening after the wedding-night, intimately portrayed in close-up to the cinema audience. This being opera, they die together after a final duet, Viens, fuyons au bout du monde, Roméo of poison, taken after finding Juliette apparently dead and she, revived, stabbing herself.
This version of the age-old tragedy did not fail to move, set out in the background of family rivalry in its social setting authentically depicted. An operatic experience deserving of its world-wide audience.