I Capuleti e i Montecchi is one of the loveliest and most moving
of bel canto operas, though not among the more frequently
performed. When Anna Netrebko and El na Garan a sang Giulietta
and Romeo in Vienna last year at the performances documented in
this , critics were enthusiastic. They found that
Giulietta suited Anna Netrebko especially well, and she could
show to full advantage her rounded tone and creamy timbre in
every register. The German opera magazine Das Opernglas wrote:
She concentrates on shaping individual phrases seemingly without
effort and with unerring security, never sacrificing tonal beauty
and flexibility. Anna clearly loves singing the role as much as
Bellini did composing it: There s a lot of piangere cantando
[weeping while singing] in Giulietta s beautiful melodies , she
says. Her music is so sad in this opera, even tragic, not at all
like Gounod s Je veux vivre Juliette.
El na Garan a s velvety timbre with its hint of noble metal made
the character of the young Romeo Montecchi come vividly to life.
The Opernglas reviewer wrote: Her interpretation of the role is
exemplary and has such elegance. And, indeed, the Latvian mezzo
has a particular affinity with this trouser role: At the moment
that I go into the theatre and put the costume on, I become
Romeo. Every woman has a masculine side and every man a feminine
side, and it s fun to test that part of myself onstage, to try to
imagine how a young man might react in this situation. He s a
young guy, so there are the hormones and the pride. There are
basically two different aspects to the character: his love of
Giulietta is very naïve, very enthusiastic, bright and sunny, but
when he and Tebaldo are suddenly going against each other, there
s also great courage and energy. It s a fantastic role.
Verdi praised the broad curves of Bellini s unprecedented long
melodies , and so does Fabio Luisi, who conducts Deutsche
Grammophon s star-studded new of I Capuleti e i
Montecchi. Luisi singles out Bellini as the composer who did most
for the development of the voice and of melody. Nobody before him
and probably nobody after him has equalled this achievement.
Vincenzo Bellini was the supreme melodist of the great bel canto
triumvirate that also included Gioacchino Rossini and Gaetano
Donizetti: the three outstanding representatives of the early
19th-century Italian style whose name literally means beautiful
singing . Singers have always loved Bellini s long-breathed vocal
writing, and I Capuleti is the first example of that style we
know so well from his later, more famous masterpieces La
sonnambula, Norma and I Puritani.
Shakespeare s star-crossed lovers would seem ideal for a composer
with Bellini s unique gift for tender, elegiac melody, but, in
fact, the subject wasn t the composer s choice: Venice s Teatro
la Fenice commission in January 1830 required him to set a
libretto called Giulietta Capellio. Nor is Bellini s opera based
on Shakespeare s tragedy, then still unknown in Italy, but rather
on an 1818 Italian play that shared its 16th-century source. That
explains divergences from Shakespeare in the opera s title, plot
and characters. He was given only a few weeks to produce I
Capuleti, which premiered on 11 March, so it isn t surprising
that the habitually slow-working composer borrowed heavily from
his unsuccessful opera of the previous year, Zaira. In recycling
that opera s finest music, Bellini was also hoping to give it a
longer shelf-life: Zaira, hissed at Parma , he quipped, got its
revenge in I Capuleti.
Throughout the rest of the century, Bellini could still be heard
regularly at all the great opera houses. Then his music fell out
of favour. In 1935, a few works were brought out of mothballs in
Italy to mark the