ROMEO OG JULIE • STAATSOPER UNTER DEN LINDEN
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
REVIEW ROMEO AND JULIE: WHAM AND PUNK IN UNEVEN BERLIN UPDATE
Really good singers in an inventive, but also somewhat postulated, updated staging make French director Mariame Clément’s version of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet a beautiful, but also uneven experience at Staatsoper Unter Den Linden in Berlin.
Large butterflies in kaleidoscopic, symbol-laden video productions, mixed with animated floral backgrounds, establish an aesthetic framework for Shakespeare’s tragic story, where Romeo and Juliet is moved up to something more contemporary and relevant.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Romeo in a kind of Wham version with partially colored hair and a red leather jacket is beautifully portrayed by Samoan tenor Amitai Pati with silky smooth vocals and strong charisma. Julie is seductively well delivered by Danish-French Elsa Dresig, who impresses in the opera’s most famous aria Je Veux Vivre (I Want to Live), earning solid soprano applause in the famous balcony scene.
Decked out in a green hoodie, blue hair and light blue denim shorts, Julie/Elsa is a sort of punk teenage version of herself, and she’s not nearly as cute as the character is usually perceived to be. In fact, the pair resemble something out of a French 80s film a la Subway.
Some would say you’re pandering to new audiences, others that you’re just updating to include. Both are probably true.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The update brings the setting to a rather ordinary two-storey detached house, a street basketball court in a backyard, an ugly girl’s room in clichéd bachelorette decor, a city park and a classroom where Romeo and Juliet get married between the stunned students in the middle of a religion class.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The drama reaches its climax in the fight scene where Romeo puts himself between two brawlers and ends up smashing the skull of Juliet’s brother Tybalt with a golf club. You know the family feud and the rest of the impossible love story.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The breathtaking butterfly animations as a kind of metaphor for the fleeting nature of youth return in several deft visual shifts that include a beautiful night scene with starry skies, moonlight and true love.
The overall impression is a bit long, but not bad, with Gounod’s melodic-romantic score, which conductor Stefano Montanari paints in beautiful, dark tones.
Scattered boos marked a certain dissatisfaction at the premiere and were allegedly directed at the modernist postulate of the staging.
Mariame Clément was responsible for a staging of Hofmann’s Fairy Tale at this year’s Salzburg Festival, which I personally found jarring in its film-set representation of Offenbach’s opera fantastique with an already chaotic plot. Maybe it’s just very French.
It will be exciting when Clément directs Donizetti’s bel canto classic Maria Stuarda at the Opera in Copenhagen, premiering in January 2025.
Right now, there are four stars from Got To See This to Romeo and Juliet in Berlin.
