Ramon Vargas and Ana Maria Martinez in Houston Grand Opera's 'Romeo and Juliet.' Photo credit: Brett Coomer
Though many have tried, Charles Gounod was among the few composers to create a successful opera based on Shakespeare -- and one of even fewer to make a hit out of this one -- Romeo and Juliet, perhaps the greatest dramatic tragedy of them all.
This week, we have a production from Houston Grand Opera, featuring rising young soprano Ana Maria Martinez, and one of today's hottest tenors, Ramón Vargas.
When Gounod turned his attention to Romeo and Juliet he'd already had a big hit with another adaptation -- an opera based on Goethe's Faust. So for Romeo and Juliet he turned to the same librettists he worked with on the earlier opera: Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. They stuck fairly close to the original play by Shakespeare, though there are a few changes to make the drama a little more operatic. Barbier and Carré cut a few scenes that didn't deal directly with the two lovers. And they tweaked the ending a little. In the play, when Juliet finally awakens in the tomb, Romeo is already dead. In the opera when she wakes up, Romeo still has a few flickers of life -- enough for the two to sing a duet (!) before Juliet stabs herself and they die together.
