OCP's high-fashion "Roméo et Juliette' (1st review)

Of the three great French opera composers of the 19th Century—Bizet, Berlioz, and Gounod— Gounod is perhaps the least esteemed.

Bizet's Carmen is by far the best known (and, let's put it simply, the best) of all French operas. Berlioz is more honored in the breach than the observance, but Les Troyennes is still mounted, and his general position as one of the seminal Romantic composers insures his reputation. Gounod doesn't receive the same recognition, but his Faust is still the preferred setting for the seminal Romantic poem, and his Roméo et Juliette. is likewise the most popular operatic staging of the ultimate Romantic play.

The latter holds forth this Valentine week (probably not an accident of scheduling) at the Academy of Music in a new production directed by Manfred Schweigkofler of the Bolzano City Theatre, featuring work from students in the design programs of Drexel University, Moore College of Art and Design, and Philadelphia University. So it's a community as well as an international effort; and the student costumes, my notes say, will "ultimately" become a standing part of this production, which returns to Italy after its debut here.

At any rate, the production is a noisy one, by which I mean that the visual elements, which ought to support the musical ones, partly pre-empt them. This has been a problem in operatic theater since Franco Zeffirelli's cloud-castle designs from the 1960s first upstaged the music.

Where's the relevance?

I'm all for invention, but I don't go to the opera for the staging and scenery, especially where it bears minimal relevance to the drama, or even distracts from it. A prime example was William Kentridge's usurpation of last year's production of Shostakovich's The Nose at the Met, which practically defied the audience to pay attention to the music.

This Roméo is set in a supposedly modern Italy, with the Capulets as a high-end fashion house (what the Montagues do for a living isn't clear). The fussy and dictatorial Capulet Senior (Daniel Mobbs) bosses his staff around as the curtain rises, with his models showing off an assorted mix of costumes. It's an amusing shadow ballet, but it has nothing to do with the opera.

Daughter Juliet is the house's trademark model, and her picture is everywhere around Verona. She sports dark glasses and a sultry air, which makes her a little improbable as a 14-year-old virgin devoid of worldly knowledge. (Of course, this is the era of Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, but neither Shakespeare nor Gounod ever anticipated that.)

Dangling torsos, signifying….?

Since the Capulets are a fashion house, plenty of mannequins abound, and in Act II an assortment of torsos dangle from the flies in midair. This device must mean something, but your reviewer, simple fellow that he is, has no idea what it may be. Later on, the torsos reappear as archaic statuary, and the central design element— a large movable staircase whose reverse side will double as Juliet's balcon