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by Charles Gounod, directed by Kelly Robinson

Opera Ontario, Hamilton Place, Hamilton

October 15, 20 & 22, 2005;

Centre in the Square, Kitchener

October 28 & 30, 2005

"Conductor Embalms Famed Lovers"

Opera Ontario’s continuing exploration of the French repertoire has provided a welcome source of diversity in Southern Ontario’s opera scene.  Past season have brought us works like “Les Pêcheurs des perles” (2002), Lakmé” (2003), “Le Portrait de Manon” (2004) and “La Voix humaine” (2004) that have so far never been staged by the Canadian Opera Company.  Opera Ontario’s current offering, Charles Gounod’s 1867 opera “Roméo et Juliette”, has not been seen in Ontario since the COC’s 1991-92 season.  

For its first-ever production of Gounod’s second most popular work, Opera Ontario has assembled a terrific cast, all Canadian but one, and has borrowed a handsome production from L’Opéra de Montréal.  Were it not for the depressingly lifeless conducting of David Speers, Opera Ontario’s new General Director, the evening could have been a major success.

Rarely have I seen a conductor treat so passionate a score so mechanically.  It’s as if Speers saw himself merely as a human metronome and cueing machine as he plodded through the score seemingly oblivious to any expressive markings.  In his hands what ought to be a scintillating party at the Capulet’s was leaden-footed and dreary.  He took Juliette’s “Je veux vivre”, the opera’s most famous aria, so slowly that the Juliette, Laura Whalen, could not sing it properly, making this portrait of a young girl’s vivacity sound like a dirge.  Speers did not even rouse himself from his lugubrious pacing for the sword fights of Act 3, meaning that the participants either had to fight in slow motion or, as they did, stand still periodically for the music to catch up with their thrusts and parries.  Faced with a conductor who gave the work no sense of tension or forward momentum, the orchestra focussed on producing beautifully blended sounds.  The Canadian Speers comes to Opera Ontario from Arizona Opera where his website bio informs us that “Mr. Speers relinquished his conducting career in 1992 to focus on the duties and responsibilities of General Director”.  Let’s hope that this uninspiring stint behind the podium is a one-off gesture and that Speers will concentrate his efforts as he did in Arizona where his talents really lie.

Although Speers’s spiritless approach had the effect of embalming the work rather than bringing it to life, the highly talented cast struggled hard to do just that.  Laura Whalen was a delightful Juliette.  Her sparkling soprano, agile coloratura and solid acting captured the image of a young girl brimming with life and made “Amour, r’anime mon courage”, Juliette’s extended scena when she convinces herself to take Friar Laurence’s potion, absolutely thrilling.  As Roméo, the sole American cast member, tenor John Bellemer displayed a cultured voice combining a soft-edged tone with surprising underlying power.  Unlike the rest of the cast, however, his acting skills were minimal and his awkward movement about the stage gave him virtually no presence. Luckily, he rallied himself by Act 5 to make the tomb scene and the doomed lovers’ final (non-Shakespearean) duet both impassioned and full of sadness. 

To learn how to cut a dashing figure on stage, Bellemer need only have modelled himself after Alexander Dobson as Mercutio, Eric Shaw as Tybalt or, indeed, Norine Burgess in the trouser-role of Stéphano.  All three of these fine singers know how important posture and gesture are in creating a memorable character on stage.  Dobson’s lush baritone and Shaw’s ringing tenor made them worthy rivals on stage.  To have Burgess in the non-Shakespearean role of Stéphano, Roméo’s page, was luxury casting.  She made Stéphano’s air “Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle?” one of the highlights of the evening. 

Baritone Thomas Goerz so clearly distinguished his two roles as humble Frère Laurent and the imperious Duc de Veronne, one might easily think they were played by two people.  He made Frère Laurent’s narrative describing the effects of the sleeping potion to Juliet thoroughly chilling.  Bruce Kelly as Le Comte Capulet, Lynne McMurtry as Juliette’s Nurse, Doug MacNaughton as Grégorio (a surprising love-interest for the Nurse), Brian Gow as Benvolio and Nelson Sierra as Pâris rounded out the strong supporting cast.   

Director and choreographer Kelly Robinson sought to trace a dynamic dramatic arc through the opera from the light-hearted excitement of the Capulet’s party to the wrenching spectacle of two young people confronting death, but was thwarted in this by Speers’s uniformly dull pacing.  The attractive physical production itself consisted of arcades of black columns that could be arranged to form various exterior and interior settings.  One subtle feature of Claude Girard’s design was to situate the altar where Frère Laurent marries Roméo and Juliette in Act 3, the couple’s bed in Act 4 and Juliette’s tomb in Act 5 in exactly the same place on stage, thus visually reinforcing the theme of doomed love. 

The production’s main peculiarity was the painting on the scrim reproducing Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel.  The play is set in “fair Verona”, after all, not in the Vatican.  While the scrim established a Renaissance setting, its presence before and after each scene increasingly gave the work an undesirably judgmental air, as if the point were to condemn the young couple for throwing away God’s gift of life even though their final words plead for God’s mercy.  A scrim with no painting at all would have been superior.  Louise Guinand’s lighting remained gloomy throughout.  In Act 2 no light broke from yonder window when Roméo claimed it did and the dawn in Act 4 was so painful dilatory in that it was no wonder that the couple could not tell if they had heard the nightingale or the lark.

Despite its flaws what the Opera Ontario production made clear is what a powerful adaptation of Shakespeare’s story Gounod’s opera is.  The final tomb scene, even though it deviates from Shakespeare, is so compelling it completely obviates the need for further explanation or remorse from Friar Laurence or the warring families.  In a production as well-directed as this, the dying couple leave life and us with a highly complex mixture of emotions.  Were the production as equally well conducted the effect would have been overwhelming.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Laura Whalen, Thomas Goerz and John Bellemer. ©Dave Grugger.