 This UCSD-TV program is a presentation of University of California television for educational and non-commercial use only. The story of Romeo and Juliet, even though it was the 16th century, I believe, written in this opera, written in 1867, and we're doing it in 2010. So much of it absolutely fits what we are living today, and many of the things that are uttered give me pause, because I think, my goodness, we're considering those same very questions. We're fighting those same very battles. We need to learn the same lessons. I'm certainly not trying to do the play in any way, but I know visually and sort of in terms of acting what makes a lot of sense. You know, I can only own what I know and what pleases me artistically, so what I just need to make sure is that you guys are game for that. The opera is textually close to the play in some ways, and in some ways it's its own unique thing. It's unusual in opera to actually approach the text from a dramaturgical point of view, and because dramaturgy has been always a big part of my work as an artist, because I have such a background in new works, that that was just something that I instinctively went to. And what I think was great about doing that was that I was able to really uncover some details about characters. There are certain things I think that because this opera, and quite frankly this play, are sort of in the canon of things that are done again and again, that assumptions are sort of like this is the way it's done. And I really wanted to go back and examine in the most sort of thorough way that I could what really who those characters were. Gertrude's response is, well, it's like watching your own child die. It's exactly what it must be like. I think that when she goes down, when she goes down and Capulet's holding her, if you can just sink to the ground, and if you can reach to touch her, it's just her leg or something, but that you're connected to her still. Singers come to rehearsal not just knowing a show, but also probably having done it several times. So sometimes they're used to doing things a certain way. And part of what I think I offer into this process is asking what if we tried something new? What if we tried something different? What if we, I know this is the way it's always done, but just like the way I was interested in exploring characters, I'm also very interested in giving an audience an opportunity to see a classic work with fresh eyes, even if it's contextualized in a very traditional context. One of the most important collaborations in this process has obviously been with San Diego Opera's conductor and resident Karen Keltner. And I found in Karen not just someone who was curious and game to try some new things with this piece, but also, and I think more importantly, she really is an expert in so many ways on French opera. To have that kind of input and time to work with a conductor was such a gift. I believe that the music in Romeo and Juliet is quintessentially French and it exhibits that French quality, first and foremost probably by its sense of moderation and economy of means and of statement and of just a quite consistent nobility and elegance throughout the score. Our cast for Romeo is a young cast and it makes the opera very credible. A couple of us are now the senior members of the a-keep of the team, as it should be. And certainly the Romeo and Juliet who are supposed to, in the Shakespeare obviously, and the Gounod to be young are young and visually they are exceedingly young. Eileen just exemplifies to my eye with her energy and her innocence and the way she moves physically. She just exemplifies what one would expect Juliet to be as a young, young girl. We first hear Juliet and we get this really vibrant key of D major and G major, which is really happy sounding and then you get her first aria where she's really out of breath and just saying how she wants to live in the dream, the dream being her youth. She's just, she's only heard of love but she wants to really live it and she doesn't want to be, she even doesn't truly want to be in love. She says I just want to live in the dream about it and explore it. Once she's singing a duet with Romeo, he actually starts his line and then he sings this gorgeous lilting minuet and sort of brings her into this lyricism and then they sort of ta-da-ta to each other, they just one up each other in the lines until he really cuts to her and she kind of gets embarrassed. And then vocally by the end you get this range of, it's a more complex kind of modulation. It's not really clearly major, it's not clearly minor, it's just blissful but lyric and really every word has its own note and it's very, it's just more, it's a smoother line and it arches more. Gounod does a great job of not only showing the emotions and the interactions between them and their feelings but also at first entrances, like I mean for instance when he first, when Romeo first sees Juliet, there's all this commotion going on with the guys and then bang it stops. And it's almost like there's a tremolo in the orchestra but not of, I wouldn't say, like a morning tremolo, it's like almost like you could see the sky open and heavens come down, he almost paints that there and it's just, it's gorgeous and you kind of, just listening to the music, you can feel that first, that almost like a movie-esque shot of him and her. His music is difficult, I mean because he sings constantly throughout the opera and he starts out very lyric with the balcony scene and his aria a la battoisse, and gradually the music gets a little bigger into the street scene where the music becomes very, very heroic because that's where all the death and his anger and his aggression comes out. To dramatically express that with your actions and your text and your voice, it can be a very exhausting thing and an exhausting night, but if you just know the text and you know the music, everything else happens on its own, I mean it just guides you to the next step and it leads you to the right place, it leads you to the right connection and it's just, it's a great, great score. There's also very few pyrotechnics in say the Italian sense of wildness happening orchestrally. There are certainly punctuations and there is a surging of tempo forward when it needs to be, but it's always, again I repeat myself, but it's always with this sense of moderation and economy and never overstating the case. It makes me think of the music of Frère Laurent because that music particularly has this beautiful basso cantante feeling to it of long phrases, but in a beautiful, beautiful legato line that delivers a text in an absolutely moving way, but in a very simple way. I particularly like Laurent because it gives me a chance to sing the true French cantabile and show off that the bass can sing legato as well as sopranos and tenors can, and oftentimes you don't get that opportunity in many operas. The bass is usually the father or he's the king or he's the old man, grandfather or he's a villain. In this particular case he's sympathetic, he's friendly, he's nice and the music reflects that and it gives me a chance to kind of show off the legato singing. I do have a favorite moment when I'm on stage. It's clearly the moment where I offer her the potion because the music becomes ethereal, almost magical. Certainly the rest of the group is very well matched, very well suited. No one stands out as an anomaly in a cast that's otherwise well aged grouped and so it's a lovely group of people to work with and a very talented group. One of the things that was really important to me in the story was that the world of this story had lots of examples of human behavior. It's like Juliet's Quinceanera, okay? It's her big girl party, right? So everybody's got a mask on or everybody's putting a mask on and everybody is learning this dance. It's like the 13th century version of the Macarena basically is what it is, okay? The idea that all the Capulets are going to dance as part of this celebration for Juliet's party and that everyone is there to wish her well and to welcome her into the grown-up world. So the dancers are actually members of the Capulet family. They're not hired dancers, they're not people that we brought in for something. They're really, you know, they're the older teenagers who know the cool dances. And other hand behind the back here we go. Step together, step and a walk, and a walk, and a walk. I have eight beautiful dancers who are making the crux of the dance happen within this party sequence in the first act. But around them I have eight chorus, eight core chorus dancers who come out and do the guillard with them and do a version of the guillard with the dancers. It's been, again, very much a layering process to put together the dancers' dance, which is of course the most difficult physically. The chorus guillard, which is a little simpler but still quite a bit of movement and I'm very pleased, I'm very proud of them. I think they're doing a tremendous job with it. And then to get everybody else standing up and doing some movement as well, it brings the party to life. I wanted the magical to feel like time was suspended and I know that generally it's just done with Romeo and Juliet on stage but I really wanted to explore the idea of when you see someone that you fall deeply in love with, time stops. Three and four, five, six. And ladies, two, three and four, five, six. And under two, three and four, five, six. And walking, two, three, four, five. I put together a piece that I thought had the flavor of Renaissance court dance but at the same time is completely original to me and to these dancers and to this piece. In those suspended moments of our lives that we all remember back to, our lives are changed forever and so I wanted to find a way to express that on stage. And so as Catorra and I began to develop the ideas for the dance and what that would look like, that was sort of our guiding principle. Same thing with Dale Gerard when we did the fights. It was very important that the fights obviously have lots of energy but that they were really character driven fights. Take that half of each there to the front. It gets us right on and it looks really good. I have to go get the video and the half of each where you're out to the front. Thank you for remembering that note. Don't be confused. The artists themselves, they're very much eager to make this opera and opera competitive in today's industry. And what I mean by that is it's not park and bark. They actually have ideas about the character that go beyond just what they bring to the aria. They have a really good dialogue about who this character is for the arc of the opera and how that then needs to be clearly defined in the fight. I think when you move up there, we need to see it and get the idea. So you just grab it and go, you have to be going, and you get there. They're both alike in dignity but they wouldn't have the same philosophy of fighting. We weren't sure which family was going to be which. We initially had thought that the more circular and everything would be the Montague's and Mercutio because of the mercurial being more like Mercury. And the way Mab kind of flows as an aria. And we wanted to do that when we thought of the way Tybalt is just there's Romeo. Everything he does is very direct but we didn't want to force that on the artists. We wanted to find out how they moved and we were incredibly fortunate that that's actually how they ended up moving. So the world isn't a sword fight. It's the fight between these two families and their point of view. It's neat around. Josh, pivot where you are. Keep pivoting. So Josh, stay on this side. Not you. You can just drop her off. Okay, they're gone. Stay right there. Couture myself at the same time and different times. I've been able to help move the bodies around the space. Sometimes for safety reasons, sometimes for aesthetic. Oftentimes I end up working as a style coordinator and just as a basic movement coach for singers. Sometimes it's how to stand or how to bow or how to give a reverence in the style in the period in which they are playing. Sometimes it's as much as just showing them how to walk in their dress or with a cape, how to lift somebody into their arms, how to fall, which is what Dale, the fight choreographer and I were working on with David Adam Moore. You stumble forward this way. You can go all the way down. Exactly. And then you're there. And it's all the soft parts of your body. So you're taking your thigh, your butt, and then all the way into your back. One more time, just slow it. And just think, even though you know the certain hand, no one you drop it, you can just drop. Yeah. Get that in part of the whole mannerism. Yeah, I wanted to just practice the ball part first and then... I'm the thing, but know where this is happening, even though you're not doing it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's great, that's great. He's very, very florid. We've worked in lots and lots of circular movements and kind of beautiful swishy things and stuff like that. He's really, really flashy, but not terribly disciplined. At the moment I'm stabbed. For me, that's the first moment that I'm completely honest. Because the rest of the time it's a facade. The rest of the time it's an act. I'm always reacting to other people and trying to get them going and yank their chain. When I'm stabbed, I finally look at Romeo and Tybalt in the eye and I say, you know, may a plague be on both of your houses. There's little I hate more about opera productions than when the stage combat and when the stage deaths are badly done. So I've been really lucky to have number one the time in rehearsal to work this death scene out and number two to have this many people whose opinions I completely trust. I mean, being in good physical condition certainly helps and this is a fairly athletic cast. I mean, they're all in pretty good shape. But it's about the breath and Karen has been very gracious in working to find the right tempo. I mean, this is a great role because you get to sing some really great music, you get some high notes, you got a great bunch of duels and you get to die. I mean, it's great. This Romeo and Juliet is so much about the duplicity of love versus the impossibility of fate. And I think that we've come at it with fresh eyes and really an open heart about the way that we deal with this production. So in addition to the fact that the dances are great and the fights are great and the singing is great and the staging should be great, I think that it reminds us that this story is still very immediate and important to all of us as humans.