Opera in brief: Opera Hong Kong performs Vincenzo Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi”

Louise Kwong and Bobbie Zhang as Giulietta and Romeo in the final scene

Perhaps it was being forced to skip a year that prompted Opera Hong Kong to step outside the normal commercial comfort zone and program Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi for this year’s summer semi-staged production at City Hall. Whatever the genesis of the decision, it was a fortuitous choice.

This Italian version of the Romeo and Juliet story is no longer as rarely performed as it once was, but this may well have been the Hong Kong premiere. It’s not hard to understand why the opera isn’t at the top of most opera directors’ lists. One downside is the lack of a major role for the tenor. Bellini made Romeo a pants part sung by a mezzo; the tenor is Tebaldo (Tybalt), who is given some very good music, but just not much of it. Furthermore, not a great deal happens; the dramatic moments of the Shakespeare play (and hence Gounod’s version)—the balcony scene, the marriage in the chapel, the duel with Tybalt—are missing in the Bellini version. This is very much a stand-up-and-sing opera, which is precisely why it is an ideal for a semi-staged treatment: the music, with the orchestra behind the singers, ends up being front and center.

Louise Kwong shone as Giulietta. Bobbie Zhang sang Romeo in what probably her most challenging outing to date. Chen Chen and Chen Yong shared the role of Tebaldo and were a study in different styles, one robust and the other suave. Sammy Chien and Alexander Chen rounded out the local Hong Kong cast as Giulietta’s father Capellio and Lorenzo.

Visiting conductor Francesco di Mauro directed the Opera Hong Kong Orchestra, which was liberally populated with principals from the HK Philharmonic, who together provided a reminder that the real protagonist of I Capuleti e i Montecchi is the music.

 

I Capuleti e i Montecchi ran on 27 and 29 August 2021.

Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books.