Bellini I Capuleti e i Montecchi opera to a libretto by Felice Romani. Directed 2015 by Arnaud Bernard at Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Stars Jessica Pratt (Giulietta), Sonia Ganassi (Romeo), Rubén Amoretti (Capellio), Shalva Mukeria (Tebaldo), and Luca Dall’Amico (Lorenzo). Omer Meir Wellber conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro La Fenice. Set design by Alessandro Camera; costume design by Carla Ricotti; lighting design by Fabio Barettin. Directed for TV by Stéphane Vérité. Sung in Italian. Released 2022, disc has PCM stereo audio output. Grade: C
It’s now early 2022, so this title was recorded 7 years ago. It’s early life was on TV, which explains why only stereo sound was preserved. Now that that profit center has been exhausted, it’s time to see if it can bring in more revenue in Blu-ray form.
Keris Nine, who saw this live in 2015, reviewed this on opreajournal.blogspot.com. Nine reports that Jessica Pratt is “phenomenal” and Ganassi “more than capable” in a decent “period production.” Mark Pullinger reviewed this for the August 2022 Gramophone at page 82. He reports if you seek “a safe, traditional Capuleti, this could very well fit the bill. H’m—talk about faint praise. The entire production was shown on www.operaonvideo.com. I watched this some, but I was turned off by Ganassi, who looked pitiful to me as Romeo.
If you want to buy a Capuleti e i Montecchi for your grandmother, this may be a good bet. But we have two other versions of this opera with great singers who are far more appealing visually than the stars here. Based on these thoughts, the fact that this is a bit stale, and the weak stereo sound only, I give this a C. I would not want to invest more time on this or provide screenshots, etc. (We usually exclude Blu-rays of operas with only stereo sound. But I make an exception for this, because it might appeal to someone’s grandmother.)
Here’s an official clip from Naxos (wisely omitting any image of Ganassi as Romeo)):
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