Charles Gounod Roméo et Juliette

Renewal
In French with German and English surtitles

CREATIVE TEAM

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Conductor
Bartlett Sher, Stage Director
Michael Yeargan, Set Design
Catherine Zuber, Costume Design
Jennifer Tipton, Lighting
Chase Brock, Choreography
B. H. Barry, Battle scenes
Thomas Lang, Chorus Master

CAST

Anna Netrebko, Juliette
Nino Machaidze (18.08, 24.08, 27.08, 30.08), Juliette
Piotr Beczała, Roméo
Stephen Costello (16.08, 18.08, 24.08), Roméo
Mikhail Petrenko, Frère Laurent
Dimitry Ivashchenko (27.08, 30.08), Frère Laurent
Darren Jeffery, Le Comte Capulet
Russell Braun, Mercutio, friend to Roméo
Cora Burggraaf, Stéphano, page to Roméo
Michael Spyres, Tybalt, nephew of Capulet
Susanne Resmark, Gertrude, nurse to Juliet
David Soar, Le Duc de Vérone
Mathias Hausmann, Le Comte Paris
Andrei Bondarenko, Grégorio
Adrian Strooper, Benvolio, nephew of Montaigu

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Shakespeare’s extraordinary play, Romeo and Juliet, was a radical text in the Renaissance. In it, he took new ideas, popular in court among the neo-Platonists, and dramatized them. The neo-Platonists found a path to engage the world through individual love. Shakespeare expanded this to social tragedy, where love heals the public strife of two warring families.
Gounod, writing 250 years later, is interested in something completely different. Influenced by Wagner (particularly Tristan), he explores how individual love offers access to the divine, something blasphemous to Shakespeare’s audience. His opera is an emotional dreamscape of the play, and placing it amidst the templar walls of the Felsenreitschule creates the opportunity to experience the ecstasy of falling in love through Gounod’s music. But he pushes this choice further toward the radical implications of two young people finding meaning not only in love, but in death as a path to the divine.
That experience and its emotional implications for the society in which they live is the dreamlike journey of Gounod’s opera.

Bartlett Sher

PICTURE GALLERY