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operaI Capuleti e i Montecchi is Vincenzo Bellini's opera about the Capulets and the Montagues, the feuding families of the Romeo and Juliet story. It was first performed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1830, to a libretto by Felice Romani. The work has a notable peculiarity: the role of Romeo is written for a mezzo-soprano, in the bel canto tradition of trouser roles. It is a lyric tragedy in two acts.
Act I. In Verona, the war between Guelphs and Ghibellines sets the Capulet and Montague families against each other. Capellio, head of the Capulets, rejects the offer of peace brought by Romeo, leader of the Montagues and the man who killed his son in battle. Capellio decides to marry his daughter Giulietta at once to the warrior Tebaldo. But Giulietta secretly loves Romeo. When he proposes that they flee together, she refuses, torn between her love and her duty to her father. Romeo and his followers burst in on the wedding feast, and the ceremony breaks up in the tumult.
Act II. To escape the marriage, Giulietta agrees to the plan of the physician Lorenzo: to drink a potion that will make her seem dead. Romeo, unaware of the stratagem, challenges Tebaldo; the duel is halted by the passing of Giulietta's funeral procession. Before the tomb, Romeo bids farewell to his beloved and takes poison. Giulietta wakes to find Romeo dying; after a last exchange, he expires and she falls lifeless upon his body, before the horrified eyes of the two families.
Bellini composed the opera in about six weeks, to save La Fenice's carnival season after another composer withdrew. To manage it, he reused material from Zaira, a work of his that had failed in Parma the previous year. Felice Romani's libretto does not draw directly on Shakespeare but on the Italian sources of the myth, in particular the Renaissance novellas that had already told the story of the lovers of Verona.
The premiere, on 11 March 1830, was a success. The role of Romeo was created by the mezzo-soprano Giuditta Grisi, that of Giulietta by the soprano Maria Caradori-Allan. The work travelled across Europe during the nineteenth century, then fell into neglect, returning to the repertoire in the second half of the twentieth century on the tide of the bel canto revival.
Bellini's writing is recognisable by its long, supple melodies of melancholy elegance. The most famous number is Giulietta's romanza, "Oh! quante volte", preceded by a horn solo of great beauty. The duets between Romeo and Giulietta, two female voices intertwining, give the work a colour of its own: Bellini entrusts Romeo's youthful ardour to a mezzo-soprano, and the result has an intimacy few operas achieve.
The second act contains Romeo's great scene at the tomb, one of the composer's finest achievements, in which bel canto ornament is placed entirely at the service of grief.
Anyone who knows Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet will discover here another version of the myth, more concentrated and more purely lyrical. The work also lets us appreciate a fascinating convention of the theatre of its time, the hero sung by a woman's voice, which today's productions embrace without hesitation and which still yields moments of great vocal beauty.
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