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At first I was surprised by the choice of a soprano for Romeo. But The opera is built to use this fact at the highest level possible. The duets between Romeo and Juliet come to a perfect blending of the voices, the couple becoming one, and that is a marvelous way of expressing this total and unbreakable love that unifies them two. But the duets between Romeo and Tybalt are also enhanced by this fact because then we have the rivalry between the two characters expressed by the opposition between the soprano and the tenor.
Bellini slightly betrays Shakespeare. Romeo is the real head of the fighting Montagues, and Tybalt is the same on the Capulet side. Romeo has killed Juliet's brother. Yet Romeo and Juliet are deeply in love, but Tybalt is also deeply un love with Juliet, though she does not respond to this love. The rivalry between the two families is thus reduced and at the same time multiplied because of the two men who love the same woman. The dramatic tension is strengthened by this simple fact. We are no longer in a fight between two families, but between two lovers. The feelings and sentiments are thus extremely more powerful. And then we understand the choice of a soprano for Romeo. Tybalt is the one who is trying to break, unknowingly at first, the love between Romeo and Juliet.
The music is very surprising in some pieces. The use of brass instruments at the beginning or here and there does not evoke a war, but rather a hunting party. Yet in the love scenes, the really dramatic scenes in the opera, the music gets to either a tremendous delicacy to express the beauty of the feelings (the use of a guitar for instance) or a phenomenal tension. The singing itself is as pure and multifarious as the tortured and split loyalties of Romeo or Juliet, especially Juliet, or Tybalt require. Pure because of the voices, because of the solos, but also because of the very precise and accurate composition of the duets or the chorus. Multifarious because no two scenes have the same coloration. We feel the evolution of the drama, of the questioning in the minds and hearts of the characters due to these slight changes in the music from one scene to the next.
An expert would probably hear now and then an echo of Mozart or some other great opera composers, but it is only an evanescent echo when it happens, a couple or very small number of notes, or even nothing but a tone, a chord that sounds like coming from somewhere else, but it is so well blended in the whole that it sounds just perfect, not one note too many, not one variation too many, just the right number of notes and words, just perfect. So the death of Romeo and Juliet becomes all the more volcanic, heavy and fiery, because of those changes in the plot and because of those perfect notes and arias. This opera deserves a better coverage in our musical culture.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
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