Things are finally starting to really feel different in America. They’ve been looking peculiar for some time now, but at noon on January 20 that subtle, weensy, wobbly wave the country started to feel in July 2016 finally found its crest and crashed onto shore reminding us that yes, a different kind of change has come to the land of the free. Moreover, we better be ready to brave it because it’s going to get wet.
If the last six months showed the country anything, it’s that there are deep, seemingly irreconcilable, ideological divides among the people — whether they’re documented on paper or not — who call this roughly 4 million square miles of dirt, water and waste home.
So what’s that got to do with a Goethe-loving French composer who, about a century and a half ago, decided to turn Shakespeare’s immortal tale of star-crossed lovers into an opera? As it turns out, more than we thought.
The story of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet is one of humankind’s most adored tales of hopeless devotion. At its best, the narrative reminds audiences about the simplicity of this thing called “love.” The most depressing analysis of Romeo & Juliet unveils a dark reminder that pitting two groups of people against each other isn’t difficult in the slightest (Shakespeare famously never actually gets specific about the rift between his feuding families, and Charles Gounod didn’t take that liberty in his remix either). The original tragedy unfolds over roughly two dozen scenes spread across five acts. Opera Tampa’s production utilizes six scenes and comfortably nestles them into a pair of acts that clock in at three hours. The time flies by, though.
Credit artistic director/conductor Daniel Lipton and the 48-piece orchestra for gliding through the production effortlessly without sacrificing any drama. Give a big pat on the back to a boisterous Lord Capulet (played by Tampa’s own Won Cho, a baritone who’s headed to Serbian National Theatre) and save a hug for a disarming Stéphano (played by mezzo-soprano Kimberly Sogioka from New York City). The production’s Romeo, Richard Troxell, is no stranger to Opera Tampa (he was Rodolfo in La Boheme and Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly) and a familiar face to fans of Fallon’s Tonight Show who may have seen him reinvent the Meow Mix jingle. The Pennsylvania-based tenor’s approachable style takes any pretense out of opera, but it does not disrespect or diminish the art form in the slightest. There’s an easy warmth in the way he looks at and longs for his Juliet (soprano Sarah Roy Miller), and the pair are golden in the opera’s garden and chamber at dawn scenes.
Miller’s thrilling potion-pandering is a close second, but the conclusion of the second act’s first scene, where an enraged Romeo avenges the death of his friend Mercutio by killing his murderer Tybalt, easily becomes the production’s dramatic climax by the time the whole of the Capulet and Montague families are screaming for justice.
Opera Tampa’s take on Gounod shines brightest, however, when bass-baritone David Cushing (who plays Friar Lawrence and moonlights as Duke) and Sarasota’s Robyn Rocklein (Juliet’s nurse Gertrude) are onstage. Their facial expressions alone lend levity to a heavy narrative (although the jury is still out on the friar wig — no offense to Emmy Award-winning makeup artist Dawn Rivard, who has created flawless pieces for countless actors). Most importantly, Cushing and Rocklein’s performances are the subtle release valve that let Troxell and Miller thrive in that space where their characters are trying to tap into everything and anything within their beings that will help them make sense of — and find a solution to — this need to be with one another in spite of the familial spat.
Romeo & Juliet’s ending is well-known (although Gounod does throw a wrench in it by letting Romeo stay alive for a few breaths after Juliet awakens in the tomb), but the best parts of Opera Tampa’s take on the classic are in the details of the pair’s relationship with each other.
Yes, there’s infatuation. Let’s face it, that’s how young love goes. Buried deep within the obsession, however, is desire and the couple’s innate need to be there and care for each other. There are infinite instances of hope that make it seem like it’ll work out (and the glimmer in Troxell and Miller’s eyes when they’re chest to chest proves it), but at the end of the day it is the Montagues’ and Capulets’ hatred for each other that gets in the way of that simple dream. It turns the hope into bloodshed and death.
The tail end of 2016 found an electorate awash in the epoch of the smear. A pointed attack waited around every corner, and impassioned, informed (plus misinformed) minions were always there to finish the assault. On January 20, the tone from a new president wasn’t too much different from the guy who was standing on the stump just months ago. When you wake up on January 21 there will be hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dissenters across the country ready to walk the streets. That disaccord will be met with more abrasiveness, and that’s the way it’ll probably go for the next four or eight — maybe even 12 or 16 — years.
Undoubtedly, there will always be love and there will always be hate.
Who knows who’ll eventually be kinda right or totally wrong. The world can always choose to act on simple impulses. There’s a nightingale and lark on every windowsill, right?
Maybe the population should take a hint from Shakespeare and Gounod’s lost lovers who got so caught up in the extremes that they forgot to operate within, and appreciate the nuances of, their love. They might’ve spent the rest of their lives trying to figure it out, but at least they would’ve been together in spite of the discord that swirled around them. Instead they gave in to their need to have it all and lost their lives completely in the process.
Romeo & Juliet at Opera Tampa, The David A. Straz Center for Performing Arts, 1010 N Macinnes Pl., Tampa, Sun. Jan. at 2 p.m. EST. $29.50 and up. More information at strazcenter.org.
