With Roméo et Juliette, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) created in 1839 a work that stubbornly resists every category. Not an opera, although Shakespeare is omnipresent. Not an oratorio, despite the prominent role for choir and soloists. And certainly not a classical symphony, even though the composer himself called it a symphonie dramatique. After a performance of Romeo and Juliet in Paris – with Irish actress Harriet Smithson as Juliette – Berlioz became so obsessed with Shakespeare that in this score he created his most personal musical universe. Ironically, Smithson would later become his wife, while their marriage proved as turbulent as that of Shakespeare's lovers ended fatally.
This capricious hybrid form of symphonic poetry, theatrical imagination and vocal drama makes Roméo et Juliette one of Berlioz's most visionary works. Wagner later called it a revelation. Rightly so, for the French composer opens the symphony here to an almost cinematographic experience, in which colours, contrasts and emotions continually displace one another. The two main characters are never sung in it but portrayed by the orchestra itself – because, according to the composer, words simply fell short. Three soloists and two choirs surround them as witnesses and commentators.
A contemporary reading of Shakespeare
That precisely this score was now placed on the stands by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra felt like a daring yet logical choice. In a scenic reading by director Aïda Gabriëls, the work moreover received an additional theatrical dimension, without the music itself fading into the background. Gabriëls is known in her own country for transdisciplinary projects she creates as resident artist of Muziektheater Transparant. Her approach departed from the ambiguity that Berlioz himself had created: in a mise-en-espace that deliberately employed the concert hall as a theatrical frame, she placed the masses – choir, orchestra, singers – as a collective body from which individuals only barely emerge. Writer Dominique De Groen added new texts that were not sung but made readable through projection as inner voices from the masses. Gabriëls continually sought the contemporary relevance of the story: hatred, polarization and reconciliation were not abstract concepts, but palpable social tensions. Do we need conflict or violence to find common ground – this is the central question for both her and Berlioz.
The video projections thereby opened the story to a broader social context. References to collective phenomena, ranging from football crowds to images reminiscent of mafia films, made the split between the two families recognizable to a contemporary audience. Not every projection was equally necessary and the repetition of certain images sometimes felt more distracting, but a few moments were visually particularly powerful, such as the death scenes (from familiar productions and films) and the closing images in which conductor and orchestra appeared as a hazy, almost dreamlike projection.
A substitute with authority
That evening, however, Cornelius Meister was centre stage, stepping in at the last minute for the ailing Dima Slobodeniouk. As Generalmusikdirektor of Stuttgart State Opera and a welcome guest in the great opera houses, he jumped in with admirable aplomb. He understood that Berlioz above all needs breathing space and transparency: no heavy-handed romantic bombast, but a flexible build-up of tension in which every orchestral colour gained meaning. Berlioz was approached here not as a composer of mere romantic eruptions, but as a master of colour and architecture. Meister let the long instrumental arches breathe, without ever losing the dramatic pulse. From the turbulent opening passages it immediately became clear how unerringly he guarded the architecture of the work. That he took over this complex score at the very last moment made the achievement all the more impressive. Meister conducted with infectious drive and visible engagement, as if he had had the work in his fingers for years. Under his direction the performance received a particularly convincing interpretation. We hope to see him often again on the podium in Antwerp.
The ASO responded with a performance that sounded both technically polished and emotionally charged. The strings found their way effortlessly between ethereal softness and razor-sharp drama, and excelled in Berlioz' endless modulations between stillness and eruption. In the famous love scene – kept purely instrumental because the composer found the human voice too coarse for it – an almost hallucinatory beauty emerged: Meister brought the melodic lines compellingly without becoming sentimental, with an almost Mahlerian glow in the orchestra. The woodwinds gave the score that typical Berlioziesque nervousness, while the brass never sounded gratuitously spectacular, but offered precisely the heroic grandeur this music demands. The abrasive passages between the Capulets and the Montagues gained a raw energy that felt eerily contemporary. Berlioz' orchestral fantasy – sometimes visionary in its foreshadowing of Wagner and even Debussy – came fully into its own here. All sections of the orchestra delivered performances of a high level, which made this performance also purely orchestrally one of the strongest ASO evenings of the season.
Choir and space as dramatic principle
Berlioz wrote his choirs not as decorative ornament but as a dramatic motor. The Octopus Symfonisch Koor proved to be an excellent partner in this: compact in sound, rhythmically alert and with enough textual expression to convincingly carry the complex and whimsical passages. The Laurens Collegium also functioned seamlessly within the two-choir whole, with Gabriëls giving shape to the contrast between the two families not only musically but also visually. Her mise-en-espace also played inventively with the hall space and produced striking acoustic effects. A smaller ensemble of singers suddenly entered from the center of the parterre, immediately filled the hall with sound and then took a position on and in front of the stage as a purely clear commentary voice. When the soloists sang from the first balcony, this also subtly alluded to Shakespeare's iconic balcony scene. The gradual visibility of the full choir behind a transparent curtain intensified the buildup of tension without diverting attention from the music. The final image, in which both choirs first stood as hostile camps facing each other only to eventually form the same line, gave the idea of reconciliation a simple yet powerful theatrical translation. They were often small interventions, but these well-thought-out details made the scenic concept particularly convincing.
The soloists formed a homogeneous ensemble. Kai Rüütel-Pajula impressed with a warm, richly nuanced mezzo voice and an unselfconscious expressivity that immediately gave color to her contribution. Bryan Register convinced with a clear tenor, flexible in phrasing and with enough dramatic sharpness to maintain the tension. Nahuel Di Pierro gave as pater Laurence with his deep, sonorous bass a quiet authority to the whole and thus provided exactly the necessary human and moral depth within the ensemble.
Between reflection and music
Not all of Gabriëls' scenic interventions were entirely necessary – the conceptual layer of De Groen's texts sometimes lay somewhat emphatically in the foreground – but they rarely disrupted the musical arc of tension and protected the work from a purely museological approach. The projected translations of Berlioz' French texts formed a clear added value, as they allowed the audience to follow the story and dramaturgical development closely. The additional reflection texts during the longer orchestral passages were interesting in content and aligned with the subject matter, though they sometimes demanded so much attention that focus was temporarily drawn away from the music. This tension between concept and music was occasionally noticeable, but remained subordinate to the strong musical and theatrical impact of the performance.
A work that continues to move
What ultimately made this performance convincing was the unselfconsciousness with which music and drama converged. Berlioz' score did not sound here like a historical curiosity, but as a living, breathing work full of dangerous beauty. More than a century and a half after its creation, Roméo et Juliette remains a composition that sweeps its audience between ecstasy and destruction. Gabriëls and Meister laid that wound bare without mercy, without sacrificing the sensual beauty of the music. Thus this performance became not only the promised feast for eye and ear, but also a confronting mirror of an era in which reconciliation has once again become a difficult concept. The sustained applause spoke for itself. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra deserves all praise for programming this rarely performed score in its complete form and for the choice to breathe new life into it through a well-considered mise-en-espace. The result was a performance that made a deep impression both musically and theatrically.