The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review - the wise guys are singing like canaries

A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in the past, and would do so again. The company hasn’t taken long to prove the point.

Severe critics might argue that Eloise Lally’s New York mafia production of Bellini’s The Capulets and the Montagues too much resembles Jonathan Miller’s iconic wise-guy Rigoletto; that the now-obligatory feminist twist on the star-crossed lovers’ fate can at times feel heavy-handed; or simply that some of Bellini’s stratospheric top notes and sinuous melodic lines don’t quite match what you might hear at La Scala or the Met. 

No matter: this version made good dramatic sense; it gripped and moved; while the gifted, committed singers, and the ETO orchestra that ably supported them, regaled the grand old theatre with a fine bel canto banquet that will now tour the land from Truro to Durham. Quibble, if you like, with the directorial conception, but ETO have done generous justice to this brilliantly rich but seldom-heard score, Bellini’s first monster hit: sumptuously tuneful in its arias and duets, viscerally powerful in its ensembles. If you seek a compelling argument for accessible subsidised opera, by all means start here.

Remember that I Capuleti e I Montecchi – sung here in the original, despite the English title – is not an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet but Bellini’s response, in 1830, to a libretto lifted from a play that drew from Shakespeare’s Italian sources. Its starker, simplified clan warfare between rival gangs justifies the postwar Mafia iconography, whatever Miller might have so famously done with Rigoletto (from bar furniture to neon signs, fans may spot similarities). Besides, Lily Arnold’s design and Peter Harrison’s lighting aspire to pay homage – we’re told – to the images of 1970s Mafia life (and death) captured by Sicilian feminist photographer, Letizia Battaglia. They, and Lally, present us with scuffed and shadowed vistas of patriarchy in decay, with the fragile, polished order of the diner gradually engulfed in rubbish and ruin (pictured below: Samantha Price as Romeo; Brenton Spiteri as Tebaldo). In the pit, conductor Alphonse Cemin leads an orchestra that began with a kind of jaunty town-band insouciance but later managed some exhilarating climaxes and (above all) several pungently well-executed solo spots. Bellini lets the players enjoy their showpiece arias too. On stage, Jessica Cale’s Giulietta – waiting tables in her father Capellio’s café – moves alone through a swelling crowd of suited clan members as day breaks and deliveries arrive. Small in numbers, the chorus nonetheless created a muscular presence, with snarling menace at times. Romeo, the young Montecchi capo, has killed Capellio’s son; now Capuleti chief enforcer Tebaldo – betrothed to Giulietta – vows vengeance. Strenuous, a little tight, at first, Brenton Spiteri’s Tebaldo settled into a smoother vein of rapt and ardent spinto tenor devotion: he must sound like a true swain, not just a hired hit-man. Capellio, in turn, had an affronted dignity in Timothy Nelson’s rather refined bass, far from the gravelly thug we might expect: the wounded patriarchy may still command respect.

But it’s Giulietta’s embattled solitude that consistently holds the eye – and ear, when Cale’s robust and agile soprano gloriously breaks her silence. Before that, Romeo makes his peace offering in disguise – pleading to end the blood-feud through marriage to Giulietta – via a call from a phone booth outside the café (pictured below). It’s a very Miller-ish trick, and maybe outstays its welcome. But it does allows us to relish Samantha Price’s multi-layered mezzo. Her imploring cavatina announced a flexible, expressive and (when necessary) properly forceful voice, endowed equally with grace and heft. As for Cale’s Giulietta, the anguished recitative “Oh! Quante volte” – where, kneeling forlorn on the bar, she laments her fate as a “sacrifice” to family honour – revealed an equally formidable, full-bodied instrument. This was no light, girlish high-soprano angel with a grainy, almost-contralto suitor, but a partnership of vocal equals. That parity enriched the emotional impact of their duets. We heard a musical marriage of minds, which Cemin’s direction gave space to flower. The pace never dawdled, but neither did key passages hurry. This music needs time to bloom across its lush legato span, and received it.

Some lovely instrumental solos (Sirius Chau’s flute, Anna Drysdale’s horn, Lise Vandermissen’s harp) complemented the strong vocal work onstage. The lovers’ duet (“Vieni e in me riposa”) glowed, and Price brought fervour and refinement to her pleas for the pair to escape – but we felt as well Giulietta’s reluctance to swap one sort of dynastic servitude for another. In the wedding scene, interrupted by the Montecchis’ surprise attack, Cale’s heartfelt prayer for peace, as she scrubs blood from the floor, punctuated deftly arranged ensemble work. Carmine De Amicis and Kaitlin Howard, respectively the movement and fight directors, had to make stand-offs between hoodlums with pistols rather than courtiers with swords visibly credible. Mostly they did so, although any period setting might struggle with the compressed action the music demands. A stylised slow-motion fight took us deep into movie-mobster, and contemporary dance, territory (pictured above). The violence felt ritualistic, balletic, and fairly ineffective too: we are witnessing the long twilight of the mafiosi gods.

In the second act, set outside Capellio’s joint, the encroaching urban blight – with a fragile street-side shrine to relieve the encircling gloom – deepened the sense of decline. Henry Hargreaves imbued the opening cello solo with a gorgeous mellow melancholia. As he outlined the plan to save Giulietta with a sleeping draught to mimic death, Masimba Ushe’s Lorenzo – the couple’s secret helper – confirmed the warmth and polish of the bass we heard in his first-act interventions. Cale’s “Morte io non temo” displayed poise and gravity, another stand against victimhood rather than meek submission to it. And the “funeral” procession passed with a creepy Goth glamour that showed off the sonorous, sinister chorus. 

Giulietta’s candle-covered “tomb” in the Capuletis’ wrecked stronghold rather stretched the limits of the gangland setting; but it mattered little when Price’s “Deserto è il luogo” moologue had summoned such an eerily unsettling sense of place. Sacha Rattle’s clarinet, anxious and wistful, thickened the atmosphere, while Price and Spiteri’s now-sympathetic Tebaldo reconciled as the snow fell. Romeo’s final romanza, “Tu, bell’anima”, saw Price depart with captivating charisma and authority across her range (pictured below). Giulietta’s revival from the sleeping potion did trigger a few laughs (as it can in Shakespeare too), although Cale sang her lament over Romeo with bristling fury and despair rather than mournful resignation. Lally then sprang a farewell surprise: one that her reading might have led us to expect, but still a move some purists might deplore. Even objectors would have surely enjoyed the style and assurance of this cast and the musicians that backed them. This production could hold its head high in much swankier, better-funded company. Let’s hope that, on tour, it gathers packs of new recruits for the opera mob.

• The Capulets and the Montagues tours until 26 April 
• More opera reviews on theartsdesk