The wintry blasts that began this annum made one more receptive
than might otherwise be the case to Charles Gounod’s
melodious but problematic opera Roméo et Juliette. The Lyric Opera’s
run of this sprawling
Shakespeare adaptation was undeniably enhanced by the
much anticipated Chicago debut of the operatic couple of
the moment, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu.
It sometimes
seems that today’s opera world, while bounteous in vocal talent, is
barren of the larger-than-life Callas-like figures that grab the
musical public’s imagination. With the frenzy over Cecilia
Bartoli having cooled and the hoary predictability and faux
spontaneity of the “Three Tenors” international road
show grown more stale and less credible than presidential
statements of contrition, the real-life romantic tale of Alagna and
Gheorghiu appears to have seized opera mavens’ mercurial fancies.
Indeed, the details of the courtship of the French-born tenor (of
Sicilian lineage) and the Romanian soprano, culminating in a
marriage ceremony backstage at the Met performed by Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani—presumably minus city fees—were
gobbled up greedily by opera fans and the general
public alike.
Of course, such over-the-top adulation engenders an
equally over-the-top reaction, and the New York press has been rife
with tales of diva and divo temperament,
most
notably regarding the couple’s caviling and ultimate withdrawal from
last fall’s Met production of La Traviata. In fairness, judging by
the reviews of the Zeffirelli production, what has
been criticized as a fit of outsize ego deportment seems more like
an exercise of