Most impressive is the moment when the orchestra falls silent and Romeo tries desperately to storm the white wall behind which his sweetheart Juliet has disappeared. Time after time, he runs up the steep slope, only to slide down defeated each time. His wild jumps and trotting make his black coat tails flutter high, as if he were a tipsy bird in agony. You only hear the dull thud of his feet, the squeak with which they scrape across the ballet floor and his increasingly heavy panting. Literally breathtaking - both for dancer James Stout and the audience.
With its production of Roméo et Juliette by Hector Berlioz, choreographer-director Sasha Waltz proves that it is possible to achieve a convincing synthesis between opera and ballet. French operas are often unpalatable to us because of the interminable ballet musicals that hold up the action and drive directors to despair. So how to fill in this 'idle' time? Waltz tilts this picture into its opposite by taking Berlioz's 'dramatic symphony' as the starting point for a full-length ballet. With, as icing on the cake, three vocal soloists and two choirs organically incorporated into the act.
With no more than a sculpture of two white sheets, Waltz achieves maximum expressiveness. Initially, these are stacked trapeze-like on stage, but as one plate is gradually hoisted slightly upwards, together with sophisticated lighting, a grim cavern is created that threatens to crush the dancers. One step higher still, the upper platform acts as the balcony on which Juliet (a phenomenal Igone de Jongh) appears, only to be lifted even higher and turn into the chilly dividing wall behind which she disappears and which Romeo (the equally convincing Stout) helplessly tries to demolish.
The choreography very evocatively tells the story of the tragic love between Romeo and Juliet, children of the rival families Capulet (in white) and Montague (in black). She fits in seamlessly with the music, for instance when Berlioz accompanies the bal masqué with Strauss-like tunes and the dancers waddle across the stage stylistically drunk. Or take the moment when Romeo and Juliet suddenly make a pumping arm gesture in an intimate pas-de-deux, splashed with a pizzicato in the double basses. - A playful element that subtly underlines the love couple's youthfulness.
The movements of the dancers are generally very fluid and classical in line, with the ladies in supple silk dresses, swaying to match their graceful movements. During the masked ball, however, they wear stiff tutus, which fits nicely with the artificiality of this and seems to refer en passant to the rigidity of the family heads, who want to maintain the feud at all costs. The many arms stretched to heaven seem to want to beg mercy in vain.
Waltz organically integrates the choir and the three singers. When the choir tells the story during the introduction, the singers stand in the pit behind the orchestra. Later, on stage, they express the relentlessness with which the families fight each other. The black-clad Montagues on the right resemble orthodox Jews, while the veils of the Capulet ladies evoke associations with Palestinian mothers. Yet there is no question of forced actualisation; you can simply see two groups that are not even that different from each other, but still fight each other to the death.
Poignant is the moment when the chorus sings a subdued requiem for the dead Juliet, whose lifeless body is meanwhile being lugged across the stage. At times she is carried by the corps de ballet on their hands, at other times she is tossed back and forth like a sack of potatoes by two men - a Montague, a Capulet - or "knocked out" like a sheet.
Notable is the role of Père Laurent, who married the young couple and orders the families to settle their feud. With his bare upper body and long black skirt, his appearance is more akin to an Egyptian high priest than a Catholic monk. The baritone Paul Gay has an impressive presence and ditto voice, but lacks some power in the lower registers. The alto Alisa Kolosova, who sings of the fledgling love between Romeo and Juliet, moves stately like a queen through the group of dancers, but her French is too unintelligible and her voice too ragged to be convincing.
Strong is the young French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, who moves as smoothly as Romeo while singing his lines flawlessly and intelligibly. He has a clear, pleasant voice that runs smoothly through all registers and reaches into the furthest corners of the theatre. The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, under Japanese conductor Kazushi Ono, presents us with moments of great beauty. For instance, the beautifully jolting run-ups of clarinet and low strings when Julia comes back to life, or the plaintive oboe that sounds when Julia takes her own life for good.
In the faster passages, neither the orchestra nor the chorus manages to get even, in stark contrast to the dancers of the National Ballet, who work together like a well-oiled machine. Berlioz's music is colourful and varied, but fails to captivate for its full duration. After about an hour, your attention wanes during the love couple's pas de deux. Here we do hear beautifully languorous strings, but Berlioz lingers too long in this arcadian atmosphere. This is also where the eye-catching choreography no longer helps.
On a performance of almost two hours, that somewhat less inspired 15 minutes can be forgiven. Waltz, with this production of Roméo et Juliette a feat of distinction. I would love to see her vision of Berlioz's cantata one day La mort de Cléopâtre or his song cycle Les nuits d'été.
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