Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's famous play about the forbidden lovers of Verona, has seen more than 100 different adaptations in the world of opera.One of the two Romeo and Juliet operas that remains at the center of the repertoire to this day is that of the great Italian composer Abel Canto Vincenzo Bellini. Bellini composed the role of Romeo for a female singer and so in his opera the duets between Romeo and Juliet are actually duets between two female voices.
Hanan Snir, one of the top theater directors in the Israel, is directing this production of the Shakespearean story. He says that,"My goal in our production is not to pretend that Romeo is a female singer playing the role of a man as was customary in the 19th century and written by Bellini. I thought the right thing was that the leader of the Montague family is actually a female leader, meaning Romeo is a woman. So the conflict has another dimension between the two families, because forbidden love is not only between two rival families but also between two women. It is clear that such a perception could not exist in either Shakespeare's or Bellini's time... exists in our version intensifies the drama and opens it up to more and more fascinating realms."When an opera deals with a loving couple it is difficult to escape the operatic tradition in which the soprano and tenor (or soprano and soprano in this case) sing together before they die, which is why all the composers who wrote operas based on Romeo and Juliet had to deal with the difficulty that in the original story Romeo and Juliet do not meet in the ending picture.According to the plot of the play, Romeo commits suicide as soon as he thinks Juliet is dead, and when she wakes up from her presumed death she sees Romeo dead and then decides to commit suicide. So Bellini for a brief moment changed the original ending and allows Juliet to wake up from her death to exchange last short words with Romeo before he dies in her arms and then she too commits suicide.The opera will take place on August 12-27 at the Shlomo Lahat (Chich) Opera House in Tel Aviv
LGBTQ: Israeli Opera casts two female leads as Romeo and Juliet
Bellini's Romeo and Juliet was written with two female voices in mind. Hanan Snir, the director of the show, has decided to take it one step further and adapted the story to two female lovers.
