Bellini: I capuleti e Montecchi

 Opera 28

Bellini: I Capuleti e Montecchi

Soloists

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Fabio Luisi

My knowledge of Bellini is fairly limited. I saw Norma years ago and included La Sonnambula in my project last year https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/10/bellini-la-sonnambula.html but that is about it. This, Bellini’s version of Romeo and Juliet struck me as almost two operas joined together as one.  When Romeo and Juliet are not singing much of the music seems to me to be routine rum-ti-tum without any special merit. But the music for the lovers - both women in this version - is on another plane altogether. There is some ravishing music here which shows Bellini’s supreme command of the long melodic line and ability to colour what is essentially straightforward harmony with telling chromatic inflections. The orchestration is also highly effective - particularly the use of the harp and long solos for the cello and the clarinet. Bellini is able to conjure a dream-like atmosphere in a way few other composers have matched. The entrance aria for Juliet is particularly haunting, as is the final duet. Again though, as I have noted before, the very end is rather disappointing - a few bars of noisy ‘painting by numbers’ trivial music for the chorus. A real pity, but it does goes with the territory with operas of this period.

At its best this was a superb opera - just a pity that it is not all at the same level of invention.

This concludes this brief look at Italian opera in the pre-Verdi era. I’ll return to Italy later in this project but next I will spend some time on Czech opera.