‘Romeo and Juliet’ Opera Review: Love and Death

metroweekly.com:

Romeo and Juliet.The co-production with the Glimmerglass Festival is filled with cavorting Capulet partiers as fun as Madonna’s Celebration Tour dancers and an energized cast with fabulous voices.

It is impending doom delivered with entertainment and style.In his debut as an opera director, Simon Godwin — normally seen leading the Shakespeare Theatre Company — brings a naturalness to the performances, which feel almost as if the singers are playing themselves.It’s a warmth that infuses the story, keeping it present and alive.

We may already know the gist of every scene, but we have the fresh discovery of how this Juliet and this Romeo live it. It’s a perfect complement to Gounod’s melodic, dramatic, deep-beating score of love, anger, regret, and loss.If Godwin likes to keep it human, he also enthusiastically embraces opera’s scope for spectacle, using the first act party scene to fill the space with a kaleidoscope of color and activity.

You may not be led visually through the antics as is typical for such scenes, but there is something fun to look at wherever the eye lands and, importantly, Godwin knows when to dial it down and let the story resume.Another confident move is the way in which the production plays with the way operas suggest time.