Roméo et Juliette

Roméo et Juliette Charles Gounod Opéra Bastille Duration: 3h15 with 1 interval Language: French Surtitles: French / English A single glance is all it takes for Roméo and Juliette to fall in love.

But their passion collides with the ancestral hatred their families bear one another in a Verona on the brink of implosion.

Although Charles Gounod was drawn to Shakespeare's play from his youth, it was only some twenty years later, buoyed by the success of Faust, that he set about putting it to music. Premiered during the 1867 Exposition Universelle, the opera achieved popular success straight away.

Four love duets, a fiery waltz, luminous music: the whole score quivers with desire. Who better than Thomas Jolly, one of the most inventive directors of his generation, to celebrate this hymn to youth?

This keen connoisseur of Shakespeare recaptures adolescent emotions while reintroducing into the opera a crucial element of the play: the plague epidemic that gives the characters an urgency to live and to love.

Fabien Gabel, musical direction; Thomas Jolly, staging; Amina Edris, Juliette (7–19 June); Nadine Sierra, Juliette (22 June–10 July); Pene Pati, Roméo (7–28 June); Juan Diego Flórez, Roméo (1–10 July); Seray Pinar, Stephano (7–28 June); Maria Warenberg, Stephano (1–10 July); Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo, Gertrude; Julien Henric, Tybalt; Matthew Goodheart, Benvolio; Leon Košavić, Mercutio; Trevor Haumschilt-Rocha, Pâris; Amin Ahangaran, Gregorio; Jérôme Boutillier, Capulet; Jean Teitgen, Frère Laurent; Vartan Gabrielian, The Duke of Verona.