Two weeks ago, in reparation for a trifling delay in shipment of a disc, they sent me an extra disc, a third on my two-at-a-time-unlimited plan. So I watched three R&Js the weekend after Xmas, no prob. Two woulda been fine, but three, no prob--nice of them in any case.
But when you get one of these ad hoc extra discs, the way it works, to get you back onto your plan's regular level, is that they wait until they get two discs back from you before they send the next one. Well, something went awry and they sent me one for each of the three I returned. So this past weekend I again had 3 R&Js to watch. ("You could just hold onto one for a week," someone told me. Yeah, right. And I could, in theory, just close up the bag of Fritos and put the rest in the cupboard for another time, couldn't I?)
OK, 3 R&Js, 3 nights in the weekend. In what order? Well, one is a pretty much full-length stage production listed as 167 minutes--it's not going to be the Sunday screening, 'cause that's a school night, right? But the other 2 are very short: a modern Brazilian spinoff of the story listed at 90m and an operatic version listed at a scant 75. So which have DVD extras I can steal for a workout or three? The modernization only. Fine: that's Friday night, the long one is Saturday, and the short opera is Sunday night, so's I can get to bed nice and early and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the start of the first five-day workweek in almost a month.
Except . . . well, see below. It's about 6p.m. now, and I'm going downstairs to watch the rest. I'm at about 2¼ hours now, and we've just gotten to Juliet refusing to marry Paris after her husband has skedaddled. Clearly, as in the play, mistakes were made.
The Verona project, part XIII, Roméo et Juliette
Who (how old), when, how long? Aha! I've figured out the source of the confusion. Per Netflix, this is a 2001 production of the Charles Gounod opera that runs 75m and stars Roberto Alagna (then 37) as Romeo. IMDb confirms the existence of such a production, though it lists it as 2002 and 80m. But the Juliet in that production was Angela Gheorghiu (35, and Alagna's wife); what Netflix gets right is that it is Gounod, Alagna is indeed Romeo, and his Juliet is Leontina Vaduva, which makes this the 1994 production, when she was 33 and he 30. Oh, and that also makes it 3hrs.What sort of R&J? She's a lot more sopranoish than girlish, if you take my meaning, but she is beautiful, and they make, if you will, beautiful music together.
Seriocomic scale for first scene? 10: a totally unfunny bloodbath.
"Wherefore": do the operamakers know what it means? Yes, though the libretto is in French and the word's never used: the balcony scene was the first time I started to feel comfortable with the Shakespeare-ness of the opera, the first time they really seem to have found the Bard's spirit.
Carrion flies? No--in fact, we don't have that whole scene of Romeo pissing and moaning about his fate.
Body count? 4: Mercutio, Tybalt, and the young lovers. The crypt scene includes only R&J, so no Paris to be killed by R, no Montague to report his new status as a widower. That final scene is pretty astonishing, about which more below.
What (else) is missing? In something that riffs in a whole different genre, it's almost as interesting to point out the unexpected things that survive, like Capulet's telling the young revelers what a party maniac he used to be: what an odd thing to leave in (though admittedly, much odder when I thought the whole thing was going to be over in less time than a soccer match). Likewise, Juliet has her vision of Tybalt's ghost, lines that are often cut from productions of the play and which arguably detract from her will-I-or-won't-I-down-the-draught focus.
After the opening fight, the chorus provides even more of a plot summary than does WS's, whereupon we cut straight to the masque, which is where we first see Romeo (and where Paris--and Romeo, and we--first sees Juliet).
There's much condensation of scenes, which I suppose could constitute either "missing" or "changed": only one visit is made to Friar Laurence's cell; Juliet shows up after Friar L has scolded Romeo, and they are married. We cut straight from Tybalt's death to the bridal suite, postcoital, and after R escapes, Friar L is summoned to comfort J, basically making a sleeping-potion housecall. That's the last we see of Friar L, who, it occurred to me this time, is essentially the Wizard of Oz of the play: he makes great promises, but he comes up way short in delivering. In this version we never know why Romeo hasn't gotten the message, only that he hasn't, and as I've said, the Friar doesn't even make a too-late appearance at the crypt. What a loser.
What (else) is changed? Juliet utters the line about a coffin being her wedding bed only after she learns who Romeo is, not, per the play, as a conditional based only on the stranger's as yet unknown marital status.
Weirdly, the Nurse must have a name, and the name she is given is Gertrude, which has some pretty heavily dissonant Shakespearean associations, n'est-ce pas? Equally odd, perhaps, is that she is the object of Tybalt's flirtation.
The central fight begins not with Mercutio but with Romeo's page (here for some reason named Stephano rather than Balthasar, and played by a cute-as-a-Veronese-bug young woman, Anna Maria Panzarella), throwing around some ill-advised testosterone in the presence of Capulets (actually, now that I think of it, sort of a substitute for the unemployed comic element in the play's opening scene). Mercutio comes to the boy's much needed aid, and then things follow per the play--except that Tybalt dies in Capulet's arms and whispers to him his dying wish, which only later do we learn is that Juliet should marry Paris. Oh, and there's no Prince; the civil honcho, who first appears after Tybalt dies, is "the Duke." Don't ax me why.
What (else) is odd? How about this: although Mercutio asks Romeo, per the play, why he came between Mercutio and Tybalt at the moment of the fatal stab, in fact the way the scene is blocked Romeo is nowhere near the action when that happens. Weird.
Much of the opera's final action is odd and extratextual, and yet that is the work's strongest section, often precisely because of the changes, which are almost all dramatically intelligent. To wit: Juliet finally drinks her potion, but it is so slow-acting that we then move to the house's chapel, where J kneels and her attendants prepare her for her wedding. As she becomes progressively less steady, the guests, the 'rents, the groom, and the bishop (no mere Franciscan to perform these society nuptials) arrive. Finally she collapses in her fathers arms, and after a lot more singing than is strictly necessary, the act ends and we move to the crypt for the big finale.
For that, Romeo arrives (how he knows part of what has happened and why he doesn't know the whole story you just have to use your knowledge of the play for--and in fact, for a while there's some ambiguity about exactly how much he does know, but it turns out to be exactly the textually fatal amount), looks at and sings to the "dead" Juliet for a while, then downs his fatal draught. But pace the play's "O true apothecary! / Thy drugs are quick!" this is another slow-acting potion, which allows R to live long enough for J to wake and for them to sing a triumphant duet until that pesky little detail R has allowed himself to forget for a moment asserts itself. One really nice moment: he reprises the lark/nightingale debate from the wedding-bed scene, the lark here representing the day of their continuing love, the nightingale the undeniable night of his death. So she stabs herself--he's still not dead, mind--and when you're assuming that R's as yet unsung famous dying word will now be sung in unison, they sing not "Thus with a kiss, we die" but instead a plea in unison for God's forgiveness--a legitimately Elizabethan ontological concern, yes, given that suicide was a sure ticket to hell, but a really disorienting conclusion here.
End-of-the-play exposition? Nope, just a long curtain call.
I dunno--maybe I live another 55 years I'll get some culture, and I do admit I liked the part of this I watched tonight a lot better than most of what I watched last night, but opera is still a once-a-year sort of taste for me. I lack the critical sense and vocabulary to assess it fairly, but I also lack any ambition to acquire that sensibility and vocabulary. This was OK, take it all around--but geez, it was long!
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