SUSANNE MENTZER as ROMEO...

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ROMEO: A Role Debut

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LA Opera's
new production of
I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Richard Hickox, Conductor
Thor Steingraber, Director
Robert Israel, Stage Designer

Laura Claycomb as Giulietta

-performed October 13, 16, 20, 23, 28, and 31 (1999)

...ONE who can spin out the high and the low notes with the vocal agility of a bel canto singer AND convince the audience that she is for the moment the youthful, romantic, unmistakably masculine Romeo.

In this superb LA Opera production, Susanne Mentzer dazzled both musically and dramatically, a most convincing Romeo in both the swordplay and the foreplay - as in the poignant duet with Juliet, beautifully sung by Laura Claycomb making her company debut, at the end of Act I.

The difficulty in casting Romeo is perhaps one reason why Capuleti is the rarely staged and thus lesser known operatic version of this romantic tragedy. Another is it had been eclipsed by Gounod's Romeo et Juliet, though an audience now appears to be building for the revival of this and other relatively obscure works. It is Bellini's sixth opera, written in a rush in 1830 as a substitute for an aborted opera of the same tale at Venice's La Fenice, when he was only 29 (he died a young 34). And although it was out of fashion at the time, he assigned both male and female leads to female voices, convinced that such would result in a musically superior expression of young romantic love.

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