Romeo & Juliet: The Real Story

Those who came to the Florentine Opera last weekend expecting a familiar story were in for a surprise. Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi is based on the pre-Shakespeare stories that informed the Romeo & Juliet we know so well. There’s no nurse, no balcony and when the opera begins, Mercutio is already dead. In the first act, there’s a good deal of martial posturing as the two families more toward war (here, it’s not just a Hatfield-McCoy-type squabble—my friend Anne Reed called it Verona’s equivalent of “trash talk”). The second act moves into more familiar territory--Juliet’s fake poisoning and the entombed finale--and actually contains some moments with great dramatic potential. A duel between Juliet’s bethrothed, Tebaldo, and Romeo is interrupted by her funeral cortege passing through the woods. In Bellini’s story, Juliet wakes after Romeo has taken the poison, but before he dies. So there’s time for a tragic duet, most of which Romeo sings with his head hanging upside down over the edge of the tomb’s marble futon.
Bellini’s opera is by no means standard fare, and it's rarely performed. Musically, it’s first-rate Bellini, but its sense of story and drama is hopelessly old-fashioned. My guess is that the Florentine Opera wanted to offer an example of Bel Canto, and also thought that the familiar story (it was billed as Romeo and Juliet rather than its more unfamiliar true title) would attract its own audience.
Those who showed up were exposed to a pedestrian production (Bernard Uzan was the stage director) peppered with moments of great singing. There's some nice choral writing, and here the singing was well-balanced and solid. And Joseph Rescigno's orchestra played with spritely energy when required. And soloists Todd Levy (clarinet), Scott Tisdale (cello), and William Barnewitz (horn) played some beautiful turns.
As for the soloists, Romeo is a taxing role, and Marianna Kulikova wavered a bit as she tried to fill every scene. On Sunday afternoon, the third performance in three days, her voice was musky and deep in her chest, and occasionally had a hard time rising above the orchestra. Georgia Jarman’s Juliet fared better. Her first moment, the achingly beautiful solo, “Oh Quante Volte,” was a thrill, particularly when her voice flew into the cascades that can make Bel Canto singing so breathtaking. But her soprano, too, showed some strain in the high register. The most dependable singing of the night came from Scott Piper, as Tebaldo, whose confident tenor conveyed his character’s heroic bluster.