How do you find a new way to approach a story as familar as Romeo and Juliet? Opera Ireland’s take sets it in Victorian times, with tribal rivalries and elegant characters
COME and see our closet,” offers Annilese Miskimmon, who is directing the new Opera Ireland production of Gounod’s opera Roméo et Juliette. There’s a lot of hammering and banging going on around the Gaiety stage as the finishing touches are put to the set, but right in the centre, there it is: a tall, venerable cupboard complete with outsize brass fittings. “The doors open right out; it spins around; it serves as the balcony and, later, as the church where the young couple get married,” Miskimmon explains. It also serves – as the word “closet” does in the language of our own time – as a metaphor for burgeoning sexuality. “People are coming out of it all over the place.”
It's a major plus for an opera director to be able to refer to a plotline as casually as this. Everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet. On the other hand, there are so many different interpretations of Shakespeare's tale of star-crossed lovers that it can be hard to find an original way in. Should you take the West Side Storyroute and make it into an edgy account of tribal rivalries? Or emulate the gorgeous romance of Franco Zeffirelli's 1960s film – or go all hip and cool like Baz Luhrman?
Miskimmon has her own take on things, which we'll get to in a minute. But while we're talking about different versions, we should mention that alongside its five performances of Roméo et Juliette, Opera Ireland will present two concert performances of Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi. It's the latest instalment in artistic director Dieter Kaegi's series of Shakespearean pairings, and it makes for a pretty spectacular musical double act: the Gounod all melodic and elegant and French, the Bellini all virtuoso curlicues, bel canto as extreme sport.
From a dramatic point of view, there are also subtle differences in the way the two composers interpret Shakespeare’s text. In Bellini’s version, Juliet is to marry Tebaldo, while the priest is turned into a family doctor. The most celebrated bit of textual tinkering, however, is down to Gounod. “Shakespeare is so definite,” says Miskimmon, who studied English at Cambridge. “At the end Romeo kills himself, and then Juliet wakes up, and she kills herself. But Gounod can’t resist waking her up just in time for one final duet between the pair of them.
"Although, to be fair, he does kill them off quite quickly. It's not like Traviata, where Violetta kind of lurches to life, then manages to sing an incredibly long aria. The strange thing is that those stunts always work in opera because of the music." Maybe Gounod felt his public needed the sense of hope that the characters express in their last moments. This is, let's face it, a pretty black story. "People always say, 'Oh, Romeo and Juliet– it's so romantic. No, it's not. It's about two teenagers who die by suicide. There is the romance, obviously – but you have to really go there with the horror of it."
Miskimmon has opted for a Victorian setting. A surprising choice, given that we all think of the Victorians as prudish? "Well, that's why," she says. It's also the period in which the opera was written. It was premiered in 1867 – eight years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. In contrast to the Shakespeare text, which gives great weight to the tribal rivalries between the two warring families, Gounod's opera concentrates on Juliet being a pawn of the Capulets. "Juliet's life is not her own. That's why she makes these desperate decisions – because her family are about to marry her off to Paris."
Victorian family life, says Miskimmon, was a combination of rigid hierarchy and over-the-top sentimentality. “When we were doing research we looked at Victorian houses, and how they were planned – and the nursery was always as far as possible from the parent’s bedroom and the living area. Women were told not to hug their children. There was a huge number of young deaths. And then there’s this nasty element of sexual exploitation and manipulation going on at the same time. It’s all a bit creepy, frankly.
"Mind you, Gounod was no angel in that department himself. I have a book called Sex Lives of the Great Composers– which is not as lurid as you might imagine, but is an incredibly useful resource – and Gounod was incredibly sexually liberal. He taught Bizet, who also became very liberal. They both slept their way through countless servants, and ménage à trois situations. So I feel that Gounod is interested in the sexual dynamic of a society where, as long as everything's okay in public, you do what you like in private. I think that's very pertinent to Juliet."
Speaking of pertinent, what is the artistic director of Opera Theatre Company doing directing an opera for Opera Ireland? With a seismic shake-up in Irish opera almost certain to happen this year, is it a taste of things to come? “Dieter [Kaegi] asked me to direct this before the whole plan came up,” says Miskimmon. “It’s just a coincidence. A lovely coincidence – but still, a coincidence.” On the topic of the new world order she is, like everyone else in Irish opera, waiting to see what will happen. “At the moment there’s no news, actually, so there’s nothing to say. We haven’t heard anything.”
Whatever happens, there will surely be a central role for Opera Theatre Company, whose success with touring productions has been remarkable, and whose site-specific productions at Kilmainham Gaol and on Valentia Island attracted both critical praise and wide audiences. “I love doing things that are a bit out of the box,” says Miskimmon. She once worked with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, on his piece Ca Ira. “I directed the first airing of it in Rome. It was an opera, but run like a rock concert – that’s the only way I can describe it. And great fun.”
She also directed The Queen Who Didn't Come To Teaby the bestselling author of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. "He's a musician himself. He plays in – what does he call it? – The Really Awful Orchestra. And he wrote a lovely piece for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a children's entertainment threaded through with some carefully chosen pieces of music. Both of those projects will bring new audiences into the art form, in a quite surprising way."
Opera Ireland has also been working hard to bring in the punters. This season it has scheduled a family event, with screenings of classic cartoons alongside a live performance, in addition to a series of lunchtime “arias and soup” concerts. The latter went down a treat last year and, as Miskimmon says, why not? “What could be nicer than to come along and hear these wonderful singers singing well-known arias? If you bring opera to somewhere surprising, you can access a totally different group of people. The audience is out there. Waiting to be lured in by the wiles of opera.”
Romeo et Juliette is at the Gaiety Theatre tomorrow and March 1st, 3rd and 5th at 8pm, with a matinee on March 7th at 2.30pm.
I Capuleti e I Montecchi is on March 4th and 6th at 8 pm. The lunchtime arias run from March 1st to 5th at 1 pm, and the family fun day is at noon on March 6th
