Romeo & Juliet Set in Post War Italy Debuts This Weekend

You don’t pick who you fall in love with and it never plays out exactly as we’d like.  Ahh love what a beautiful thing, yet it can be rather melancholy.  A perfect example of this is Shakespeare’s 16^th century tragedy about two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, whose love is forbidden because of their feuding families.

Since the plays inception in the 1590’s, there have been countless adaptations of Romeo and Juliet set in different time periods.  Mainly because at the core of the tragedy, love, is a timeless theme that everyone can relate to.

This weekend, at Palm Beach’s Kravis Center, Director Kevin Newbury takes on a French Romantic version of Charles Gounod’s opera of Romeo and Juliet, first staged in 1867.  Newbury and his team chose an interesting setting for the opera; the lovers are in post-WWII Italy, after the fall of Mussolini and before Italy’s economic rise, a time when families clashed over political views.

The stage is multi-level, with a giant wall and a bridge giving the play an opportunity for large-scale scenes as well as more intimate scenes such as the lover’s bed in which Romeo and Juliet take their lives.

The Palm Beach Opera is offering three different plays, with different performers in each.  On Friday, the play begins at 7:30pm.  Two performances are on Saturday, one at 1pm, which is a family friendly performance, while the other is at 7:30pm.  Sunday’s performance begins at 2pm.  For more information regarding the plays and the different performers, you can visit http://events.pbpulse.com/.

Source: The Palm Beach Post