Berlioz
Roméo et Juliette – Dramatic Symphony to a libretto by Émile Deschamps, Op.17 [sung in French; text and translation included in programme]
Julie Boulianne (mezzo-soprano), Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (tenor) & Laurent Naouri (bass)
Monteverdi Choir
National Youth Choir of Scotland
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Sir John Eliot Gardiner
Reviewed by: Nick Breckenfield
Reviewed: 30 July, 2016
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
Only the fourth complete performance of Roméo et Juliette at the Proms this – although not stated as such – was really a Proms premiere. The reason? Well, John Eliot Gardiner presented Berlioz’s original conception of the work – including, mid-way, a Second Prologue which was discarded in sketch form but orchestrated in 1995 by none-other-than Oliver Knussen for the New Berlioz Edition (and recorded that year by Gardiner and his then-new Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique) and also a rather jazzy ‘Requiem’ appended to the choral accompaniment to Juliet’s cortège – a meta-performance, if you will, as if we had got into Berlioz’s head in his white heat of inspiration.
Given that any such editorial information was buried within Gerald Larner’s programme note, the additional pieces took me completely by surprise. I found the Second Prologue particularly pertinent – balancing the semi-chorus’s opening explanation of the action and making much more sense of the end of this Symphony. Knussen’s scoring is intrinsic to Berlioz’s. Other than that – I think I’m correct in determining – we got Gardiner’s “preferred movement order” (as listed in his 1995 Philips release), so not the original version of the Finale.
But the lion’s share of Berlioz’s imagination was fulfilled by the ORR, making the most of the score’s individual and often-audacious sonorities, which Gardiner conducted with sweeping advocacy: ardent, brilliantly fleet, and glittering; and splendidly sepulchral in the dark mutterings that signal Romeo arriving at Juliet’s tomb.
On August 21 Sir John Eliot takes these performers to the Berlioz Fest at La Côte-Saint-André.
- Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 (available on BBC iPlayer for thirty days afterwards)
- BBC Proms www.bbc.co.uk/proms