The great librettist Arrigo Boito once said, “Who does not love Vincenzo Bellini, does not love music.” Likewise, he who does not love the story of Romeo and Juliet does not know love. Separated by family, drawn irresistibly together by young love’s yearning, Romeo and Juliet sacrifice everything because they are unwilling to sacrifice just one thing – their love for each other.

Romeo & Juliet (I Capuleti e i Montecchi) will be sung in Italian with English translations projected above the stage.

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FIRST PERFORMED:

During the 1830 Carnival season at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy

SOUNDS FAMILIAR:

The music from Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi is less widely featured in popular entertainment media than the melodies of many operas.  However, Bellini’s work from other compositions has been heard in many movies, most recently including “Atlantis,” (1991), “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” (1991); “The Bridges of Madison County,” (1995); “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” (1999); “Cashback,” (2006) and “2046” (2006) to name a few.

DID YOU KNOW?

This opera and its libretto is based on Italian sources rather than taken directly from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In fact, behind the libretto stand many Renaissance sources that were popular in Italian literature and culture.

In Venice to prepare the local première of another opera, Il pirata, Bellini wrote I Capuletie i Montecchi in a month and a half. As he composed, he reworked ten melodies from his unsuccessful Zaira into I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and wrote in a letter, "Zaira, hissed at Parma, was avenged by I Capuleti."

At the height of his career and only 33 years old, Bellini died of a chronic intestinal ailment on September 23, 1835, in a small town near Paris.

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