Roméo et Juliette (Libretto)

Romeo und Juliette are social outsiders in a world full of strict conventions. In Charles Gounod’s French setting of this famous love story, the young pair meets at a lavish ball. Juliette, who is sheltered by her father, opens with lively waltz «Je veux vivre», while Roméo and his friends have snuck into their rivals’ party. It’s love at first sight, and the beginning of their fateful affair. The intense passion that develops between the two is at the center of Gounod’s Romantic opera: Four grand duets mark the path from love’s first bloom to the tragic deaths that the two experience as redemption.
American stage director Ted Huffman sets Gounod’s opera, which first appeared on stage at the 1867 Paris Exhibition world’s fair, on a simple dance floor. The waltz – which was modern in Gounod’s on time – becomes, in Huffman’s interpretation, a symbol for a society with outdated values from which Roméo and Juliette must free themselves. As in his «exceptionally harmonious» Madama Butterfly, here Huffman proves to be a «fine draftsman of gestures, moods and glances» pulling focus «even more towards the emotional tensions between the lovers», according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
As in the premiere run, Julie Fuchs is Juliette. Tenor Stephen Costello, who last appeared here as Roberto Devereux, bows as Roméo.(Text by Opernhaus Zürich)