Romeo et Juliette

Charles Gounod

Roméo et Juliette

LIVE IN HD

Saturday, Jan 30

View Full Live in HD Season

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts one of the most sumptuous scores in the repertoire, leading Gounod’s honeyed adaptation of Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy, live in cinemas January 30. Radiant soprano Nadine Sierra makes her Met role debut as the effervescent Juliette, opposite tenor Stephen Costello as the ardent Roméo, all amid the romantic realism of Bartlett Sher’s staging. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to more than 2,200 theaters in more than 70 countries worldwide

Buy tickets for Roméo et Juliette live in the opera house here. 

A La Scala production initially presented by the Salzburg Festival

Production a gift of The Sybil B. Harrington Endowment Fund

Revival a gift of Rolex

Read Synopsis

Sung In

French

Met Titles In

  • English
  • German
  • Spanish

Estimated Run Time

3 hrs 2 mins

  • House Opens

  • Part I

    73 mins

  • Intermission

    34 mins

  • Part II

    75 mins

  • Opera Ends

Cast

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Performing

Performed

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World premiere: Théâtre Lyrique, Paris, 1867. Perhaps the most enduringly successful of the many operatic settings of the world’s consummate love story, Roméo et Juliette is an excellent example of French Romanticism, a tradition that values subtlety, sensuality, and graceful vocal delivery over showy effects. In the opera there is a slight shift of focus away from the word games of the original play and a greater focus on the two lovers, who are given four irresistible duets, including a brief final reunion in the tomb scene that does not appear in the play.

Creators

Charles Gounod (1818–1893) showed early promise as a musician and achieved commercial success with his opera Faust in 1859. Among his most famous works is a setting of the Ave Maria based on a piece by J. S. Bach. Jules Barbier (1825–1901) and Michel Carré (1821–1872) were the leading librettists of their time in France, providing the text for many other operas, including Faust for Gounod, Mignon (also from Goethe) and Hamlet for Ambroise Thomas, and Les Contes d’Hoffmann for Jacques Offenbach.

PRODUCTION

Bartlett Sher

SET DESIGNER

Michael Yeargan

COSTUME DESIGNER

Catherine Zuber

LIGHTING DESIGNERS

Jennifer Tipton

CHOREOGRAPHER

Chase Brock

FIGHT DIRECTOR

B. H. Barry

Headshot of Charles Gounod

Composer

Charles Gounod

Setting

Der Rosenkavalier

In Shakespeare’s lifetime, Italy was a land of many small city-states in constant warfare with one another, but this same country was also the cradle of the Renaissance, with its astounding explosion of art and science. The image invoked by the story’s setting in the ancient city of Verona, then, is a beautiful but dangerous world where poetry or violence might erupt at any moment. The Met’s new production moves the action to the 18th century.

Music

Gounod infuses this classic drama with an elegant musical aura that reflects the soaring poetry of the original. When the composer explores the darker and more violent side of the story, his music creates drama without resorting to bombast. A reserved melancholy creates all the necessary tension. For the story’s more lighthearted moments, Gounod supplied the sort of buoyant melodies that made his Faust a huge hit with audiences. Midway through Act I, the heroine takes the stage with the giddy coloratura gem “Je veux vivre dans ce rêve.” Moments such as these add musical and dramatic texture to the tragedy, admired for its contrast of light and dark.

Der Rosenkavalier

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