It might seem like impertinence, not to say blasphemy, to suggest that Shakespeare could ever be bettered. But Bartlett Sher, the director of a new production of Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” that opens at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year’s Eve, is willing to go there.
“The opera avoids problems of the play,” he said in a recent interview. “The letter, how they miss each other, how they get to the tomb: Those don’t seem to be relevant in the opera.”
For all the adjustments and abridgments Gounod and his librettists made to turn “Romeo” into “Roméo,” they maintained the key scenes that move the wrenching plot forward: ball, balcony, bed and tomb. (As far as four-word summaries go, you could do worse.)
While Mr. Sher and the conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, prepared for the Met production, which stars Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo as the star-crossed lovers, they spoke to The New York Times about their approach to those four sequences. We’ve edited excerpts from their conversation.
The Ball
BARTLETT SHER The opera is incredibly interesting for its compression of plot. It compresses a lot into the ball scene to get a lot accomplished, taking the approach of a party for Juliette to push together the plot of the first act and a half of Shakespeare.
GIANANDREA NOSEDA You have to create a situation where you cannot imagine what is going to happen. So everything should be light, a lot of happiness. I don’t want to give the impression to the audience that the party is going to take the story in a dramatic direction. It should be like a comedy.
SHER It’s very smart and elegant how it does it, and really quite movielike, because you don’t have to change location. You can go from epic scenes of dancing to the Queen Mab speech, and it all seems to weave in and out of this party scene. And that’s definitely not the play, that’s compressing the first third of the play into one scene.
NOSEDA The music in Gounod is speaking in a very — how can I say? — frank way. A lot of enthusiasm. When Juliette comes in with “Je veux vivre,” it’s a depiction of the joy in the life of a teenager.
SHER I do it in a single space. There’s nothing more annoying in an opera than stopping to change the set. So here you almost never stop. You’re in this dream space, without stopping.
NOSEDA The first act should be joyful. Some tensions, but not so important. It’s a very fast waltz that I keep according to the tempo. It’s not a gentle version. It’s a caricature of a waltz.
The Balcony
NOSEDA What’s magic for me is what’s happening just before the balcony scene, when Juliette goes inside her home. Gounod is depicting the very warm night, summertime in Italy, this kind of atmosphere when you can smell the jasmine. There are these slow triplets, and the strings should never cover this. Very transparent, very delicate.
SHER I do think that the Gounod balcony scene is as moving and as effective as the other one. It has a great aria to introduce you to Roméo alone; then you see her; then there’s the kind of longing to reach each other; then she comes in below; and then they’re interrupted by a chorus. It’s good rhythmically that that comes about, because it cleans the slate and creates anticipation for the next event.
NOSEDA You should keep it very youthful, not to make a love scene between a 35-year-old lady and a 38-year-old man.
SHER They declare their love in the first section and they make a plan in the second section. And halfway through the plan, you get another interruption, which ups the tension again. I do use a physical balcony. I like the physical obstacle, which gives some sense of the stakes between the Montagues and the Capulets.
The Bed
SHER I don’t have a, quote, “bed.” I just drape the deck with a cloth, so it’s the whole platform. When I first approached the opera, I moved the fight scene to after the intermission rather than right before, so Roméo runs into her arms having just killed Tybalt, and it increases the tension. But Diana had seen the production in Salzburg, and when we were starting the scene, she said, “Can we try it a different way?” She felt it was very important that they had just had sex, that they were postcoital. She challenged me to look at it differently.
NOSEDA You expect it to be erotic. We have four duets, and the bed is the third between these two teenagers. The temperature should increase accordingly. You think the bed scene is the climax of eroticism in the opera, and there is an element of drama that Juliette knows that Tybalt has been killed by Roméo. But the last duet, the one in the tomb, is even more sensual and erotic.
SHER The other way was quite thrilling when it came to pure stakes, and her having to wash him and him being full of guilt. Now the musical intro is long enough that as it goes on, he can get to the point of having a kind of PTSD reflection on earlier in the day.
The Tomb
NOSEDA He [Gounod] quotes music from the previous acts, but now when he quotes it, you are in a completely different environment. It’s like when you see yourself in a deforming mirror. You recognize yourself, but your legs are too long, or your head is too small. The music is the same, but he gives it to different instruments. Or instead of doing the same way of phrasing, say, four bars plus four bars, he just makes it three bars plus one.
SHER It’s different from the play, in that they [Roméo and Juliette] actually talk to each other. Which is smart, because then they can sing together. And it’s even more interesting that, given the effect of the poison, he comes in and discovers her, and she wakes up, and it’s slow-acting enough that when she wakes up, he’s filled with joy. And then when they break for the door, he’s seized by the poison.
NOSEDA When Juliette awakes, and Roméo has already taken the poison, the music little by little increases speed. At the beginning, the Roméo music is pretty fast. When he takes the poison, his slows down, and the music of Juliette does the opposite.
SHER It’s very heartbreaking, because it forces them into a decision. You sort of see the double suicide. In this production, she gives him the knife and then they put it in her together. It has a sensuality to it, and a mutuality to it.
NOSEDA The tomb scene is the most incredible love duet, not because they make love, but because they find a way to be together to the death.
**************************
It might seem like impertinence, not to say blasphemy, to suggest that Shakespeare could ever be bettered. But Bartlett Sher, the director of a new production of Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” that opens at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year’s Eve, is willing to go there.
“The opera avoids problems of the play,” he said in a recent interview. “The letter, how they miss each other, how they get to the tomb: Those don’t seem to be relevant in the opera.”
For all the adjustments and abridgments Gounod and his librettists made to turn “Romeo” into “Roméo,” they maintained the key scenes that move the wrenching plot forward: ball, balcony, bed and tomb. (As far as four-word summaries go, you could do worse.)
While Mr. Sher and the conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, prepared for the Met production, which stars Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo as the star-crossed lovers, they spoke to The New York Times about their approach to those four sequences. We’ve edited excerpts from their conversation.
The Ball
BARTLETT SHER The opera is incredibly interesting for its compression of plot. It compresses a lot into the ball scene to get a lot accomplished, taking the approach of a party for Juliette to push together the plot of the first act and a half of Shakespeare.
GIANANDREA NOSEDA You have to create a situation where you cannot imagine what is going to happen. So everything should be light, a lot of happiness. I don’t want to give the impression to the audience that the party is going to take the story in a dramatic direction. It should be like a comedy.
SHER It’s very smart and elegant how it does it, and really quite movielike, because you don’t have to change location. You can go from epic scenes of dancing to the Queen Mab speech, and it all seems to weave in and out of this party scene. And that’s definitely not the play, that’s compressing the first third of the play into one scene.
NOSEDA The music in Gounod is speaking in a very — how can I say? — frank way. A lot of enthusiasm. When Juliette comes in with “Je veux vivre,” it’s a depiction of the joy in the life of a teenager.
SHER I do it in a single space. There’s nothing more annoying in an opera than stopping to change the set. So here you almost never stop. You’re in this dream space, without stopping.
NOSEDA The first act should be joyful. Some tensions, but not so important. It’s a very fast waltz that I keep according to the tempo. It’s not a gentle version. It’s a caricature of a waltz.
The Balcony
NOSEDA What’s magic for me is what’s happening just before the balcony scene, when Juliette goes inside her home. Gounod is depicting the very warm night, summertime in Italy, this kind of atmosphere when you can smell the jasmine. There are these slow triplets, and the strings should never cover this. Very transparent, very delicate.
SHER I do think that the Gounod balcony scene is as moving and as effective as the other one. It has a great aria to introduce you to Roméo alone; then you see her; then there’s the kind of longing to reach each other; then she comes in below; and then they’re interrupted by a chorus. It’s good rhythmically that that comes about, because it cleans the slate and creates anticipation for the next event.
NOSEDA You should keep it very youthful, not to make a love scene between a 35-year-old lady and a 38-year-old man.
SHER They declare their love in the first section and they make a plan in the second section. And halfway through the plan, you get another interruption, which ups the tension again. I do use a physical balcony. I like the physical obstacle, which gives some sense of the stakes between the Montagues and the Capulets.
The Bed
SHER I don’t have a, quote, “bed.” I just drape the deck with a cloth, so it’s the whole platform. When I first approached the opera, I moved the fight scene to after the intermission rather than right before, so Roméo runs into her arms having just killed Tybalt, and it increases the tension. But Diana had seen the production in Salzburg, and when we were starting the scene, she said, “Can we try it a different way?” She felt it was very important that they had just had sex, that they were postcoital. She challenged me to look at it differently.
NOSEDA You expect it to be erotic. We have four duets, and the bed is the third between these two teenagers. The temperature should increase accordingly. You think the bed scene is the climax of eroticism in the opera, and there is an element of drama that Juliette knows that Tybalt has been killed by Roméo. But the last duet, the one in the tomb, is even more sensual and erotic.
SHER The other way was quite thrilling when it came to pure stakes, and her having to wash him and him being full of guilt. Now the musical intro is long enough that as it goes on, he can get to the point of having a kind of PTSD reflection on earlier in the day.
The Tomb
NOSEDA He [Gounod] quotes music from the previous acts, but now when he quotes it, you are in a completely different environment. It’s like when you see yourself in a deforming mirror. You recognize yourself, but your legs are too long, or your head is too small. The music is the same, but he gives it to different instruments. Or instead of doing the same way of phrasing, say, four bars plus four bars, he just makes it three bars plus one.
SHER It’s different from the play, in that they [Roméo and Juliette] actually talk to each other. Which is smart, because then they can sing together. And it’s even more interesting that, given the effect of the poison, he comes in and discovers her, and she wakes up, and it’s slow-acting enough that when she wakes up, he’s filled with joy. And then when they break for the door, he’s seized by the poison.
NOSEDA When Juliette awakes, and Roméo has already taken the poison, the music little by little increases speed. At the beginning, the Roméo music is pretty fast. When he takes the poison, his slows down, and the music of Juliette does the opposite.
SHER It’s very heartbreaking, because it forces them into a decision. You sort of see the double suicide. In this production, she gives him the knife and then they put it in her together. It has a sensuality to it, and a mutuality to it.
NOSEDA The tomb scene is the most incredible love duet, not because they make love, but because they find a way to be together to the death.
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