Welcome

What a plot for an opera! Two young people madly in love with each other whose desire to spend the rest of their lives together seems impossible because of the hatred between their families. The lovers die together after a glittering ball, a heated duel and a secret wedding, because of unlucky twists of fate. The story of Romeo and Juliet is the ultimate love story and has long epitomized the concept of an ideal love that conquers all.

Gounod fell in love with the story of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers at the age of nineteen, when he attended an orchestra rehearsal of Berlioz’s dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette. This powerful musical retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy had a profound effect on Gounod. Decades later, in 1864, Gounod created an operatic version of Romeo and Juliet. Along with the librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, they simplified Shakespeare’s original story, eliminating minor characters and reducing the plot to its bare essentials. This enabled Gounod to focus on the passionate love affair at the heart of the story.

Gounod’s magnificent arias and stunning love duets brought Roméo et Juliette enormous success at its 1867 world premiere in Paris. Gounod may not have been a profound Shakespearean, in the sense that Berlioz or Verdi was, but he had a healthy respect for classics as well as for the tastes of his own audience.