Fri | Jan 3, 2025

'Roméo et Juliette' tomorrow at Carib 5

Published:Thursday | January 19, 2017 | 12:00 AM
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Contributed
A scene from Gounod’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’.
Contributed
Vittorio Grigolo (left) as Roméo and Diana Damrau as Juliette in Gounod’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’.
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Vittorio Grigolo and Diana Damrau star in a new production of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and directed by Bartlett Sher. The new staging, which opened at the Met in New York on New Year's Eve, will be seen worldwide tomorrow when the matinee performance, hosted by Ailyn Perez, will be transmitted live around the world. The transmission will be seen in more than 2,000 cinemas in 70 countries around the world, including the Carib 5 in Jamaica at 12:55 p.m.

Romeo et Juliette, perhaps the most enduringly successful of the many operatic settings of the world's most well-known love story, premieried on April 27, 1867, only a month after Verdi's Don Carlos debuted at the Opera. Audiences packed the Theatre Lyrique night after night to see it. Its immense popularity was amplified by the Exposition Universelle, which had opened on April 1. The gigantic world's fair, celebrating all things French and the glories of Haussmann's recently rebuilt Paris, drew national and international visitors to the capital in numbers never seen before.

By July, Romeo et Juliette had opened at London's Covent Garden and before the year was out, it had reached Belgium and Germany.

Bartlett Sher's staging of Romeo et Juliette is a co-production with La Scala. It was initially presented at the Salzburg Festival in 2008. It features set design by Michael Yeargan, costume design by Catherine Zuber, lighting design by Jennifer Tipton, choreography by Chase Brock in his Met debut and fight direction by B.H. Barry.

Diana Damrau makes her role debut as Juliette, opposite Vittorio Grigolo as Romeo. The cast also includes Virginie Verrez in her Met role debut as Stephano; Elliot Madore, a 2010 winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as Mercutio; and Mikhail Petrenko, who makes his Met role debut as Frere Laurent, a role he has sung previously at the Salzburg Festival.

Tickets are available at the box office or online at www.palace-amusement.com with a Palace Card or any major credit card.