Romeo Et Juliette Musical Lyrics

[Pricilla Igoe]

Romoet Juliette: de la Haine l'Amour is a French musical based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, with music and lyrics by Grard Presgurvic.[1] It premiered in Paris on January 19, 2001. The production was directed and choreographed by Redha, with costumes by Dominique Borg and settings by Petrika Ionesco. The producers were Grard Louvin, GLEM, and Universal Music.!Since then, the musical has been performed in Verona, Rome, Canada, Antwerp, London, Amsterdam, Budapest, Szeged, Moscow, Vienna, Bucharest, Seoul, Pusan (South Korea), Taipei, Monterrey, Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Portugal and has been translated into several languages, including Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, English, German, Spanish, Romanian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Slovak.

Differences from Shakespeare's plot include that the nature of the lovers' deaths is different, depending on the production. New characters such as Death (French, Belgian, Japanese, Netherlands, and Moscow productions only) and the Poet (French production only) appear for dramatic effect. Lady Capulet has a greatly increased role and in the case of the Hungarian version, has an affair with her servant. The role of Tybalt has changed slightly from being purely dark to a more pitiful character because of his growing up with the hate and a dark childhood, as well as an unrequited attraction to Juliet.

A long-standing feud between the two leading families of the city of Verona, the Montagues and the Capulets, regularly erupts into violence on the city's streets. Irritated, the Prince of Verona decrees, on pain of death, the absolute prohibition on fighting in the city (Vrone). While Lady Capulet and Lady Montague denounce the violence of the two clans (La haine), Romeo (the sole heir of the Montagues) and Juliet (the daughter of the Capulets) are hopelessly in search for love (Un jour).

After the ball, Juliet takes refuge in her room and dreams of Romeo (Le pote), who woos her at great personal risk in the Capulets' garden. They exchange lovers' vows and plan to marry in secret as soon as possible (Le balcon). Knowing that their families will never agree to their marriage, Romeo meets Friar Lawrence and asks him to marry them. He accepts hoping that this union will reconcile the two families (Par amour).

Romeo and Juliet spend their wedding night together and Romeo makes his escape to Mantua (Le chant de l'alouette). Shortly after her husband has left, Juliet is informed by her parents that she is to be married to Paris. She refuses and they threaten to disown her (Demain). Upset, Lord Capulet sings about the love he has for his daughter (Avoir une fille). In her room, Juliet asks why she has to obey (Pourquoi). In Mantua, Romeo thinks of Juliet. In desperation, she turns to Friar Lawrence, who devises an ingenious plan, which he hopes will ultimately bring a happy ending for both the lovers and their two families (Sans elle).

Juliet appears to go along with the marriage plans but, in the night before the wedding, she takes the drug prepared by Friar Lawrence which makes her appear dead (Le poison). Juliet is duly laid in the family vault, hoping to wake up to find Romeo waiting for her. Unfortunately, The Friar's message telling Romeo of the plan somehow goes astray, and instead he hears only from Benvolio that his wife Juliet is dead (Comment lui dire).

Grief-stricken, he breaks into the Capulet vault, finds what he believes to be the mortal remains of his beloved, and takes poison to be reunited with her in death (Mort de Romo). Soon afterwards, Juliet awakes to find her husband dead and she stabs herself with Romeo's dagger (La mort de Juliette). Friar Lawrence enters the vault and finds the two lovers dead. He complains to God (J'sais plus). When the whole story is told, the two devastated families agree henceforward to live in peace (Coupables).

Notes :

- "La folie" and "Pourquoi" were sung until Jun. 27, 2001. They can be found on the L'Integrale recording and the second disc of some DVD recordings.

- "Sans elle" is sung only by Romo on the cast recording, but by Romo and Juliette during the show

- Curtain calls were "Aimer", and "Les rois du monde"

Jerome Robbins had at first envisioned Juliet as a Jewish girl and Romeo as an Italian Catholic. The action, set during the Easter-Passover season, was to have occurred on the Lower East Side of New York City. Hence the title might have been EAST Side Story. (Another working title was Gangway!) That was in 1949. Six years later, Laurents and Leonard Bernstein were working (independently) in Hollywood, where they conferred on the aborted project. The newspapers were filled with reports of street riots by Chicano Americans in Los Angeles.

While there is hope in WSS, there also is despair, and this too is reflected, in musical terms. Throughout the entire score the interval of the tritone is prominently displayed. (Theorists from the past have nicknamed the tritone Diabolus in musica (Devil in music"). It was considered the most "dangerous" interval. Its unstable, rootless quality (C, for example, to F# consists of three whole-steps, hence: tritone) was the perfect musical distillation of the unstable relationship between Tony and Maria, and for the rootlessness, and the resulting ruthlessness, of the Jet and Shark gangs.

The most astonishing career to be launched from the WSS pad was that of its lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, considered by many to be the most significant composer-lyricist of our time. If there is an indigenous American operatic style of today, Sondheim must be regarded as its standard-bearer. The operatic innovations introduced by the WSS creative quartet: broader song dimensions, simultaneities in complex counterpoint, etc. became grist to the Sondheim mill.

Symphonic Dances Form West Side Story was premiered by the New York Philharmonic on February 13, 1961, but the conductor was Lukas Foss. Bernstein was named Music Director of the Philharmonic one year after the opening of WSS, and although he later performed and recorded the Dances with the orchestra, he never, prior to the 1985 recording, conducted a performance of the show. (He was in the pit to conduct the so-called Overture - - a compilation of tunes not made by him - -for one of the early Broadway revivals). But why should someone whose career has been so diversified concentrate on one all-consuming project, a Broadway run? Bernstein never conducted a live theater performance of his Candide, Wonderful Town, or MASS, either.

His recording of On The Town, made long after its premiere with, among others, three of the original cast members, is the first show album ever to be put onto disc by its composer. But one historical first has yet to occur in the annals of recorded Broadway musicals: a full original cast album conducted by its composer.

Although Bernstein did not suffer the indignity of the mayhem perpetrated on his score in the movie of On The Town, the movie of West Side Story did make some minor alterations. "I Feel Pretty" was transferred to an earlier scene, the bridal shop. The location of "Gee, Officer Krupke" was interchanged with "Cool". Sondheim also wrote new lyrics for "America", performed by all the Sharks and their girls (in the stage version it is presented by four girls only).

These changes were judged to be necessary to sustain an on-rushing sense of doom. After all, the movie was not interrupted by an intermission during which an audience could recover form the devastation wrought by the danced Rumble. On stage, the bubbly "I Feel Pretty", at the beginning of Act II, was a kind of extension of intermission babble.

Due to the web of deception, Nixon felt she deserved a cut of the movie-album royalties. Neither the movie or the record producers would bow to her demands. Bernstein broke the stalemate by volunteering a percentage of his income, a gesture of loyalty-royalty since Nixon had been a performer-colleague of his at New York Philharmonic concerts.

West Side Story exist in a number of arrangements suitable for concert performance. The "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story" is among the most performed orchestral works of the 20th century, and is consistently seen on programs worldwide.

Performance Notes: The two Concert Suites cannot be performed together. For orchestral concerts, an instrumental number from West Side Story, such as Symphonic Dances, can be played alongside with: either a) up to three individual songs from West Side Story, or b) one of the Concert Suites from West Side Story.

Notable examples which worked include as West Side Story (based on Romeo and Juliet), Kiss Me Kate (based on The Taming of the Shrew) and The Lion King (based on Hamlet). Less obvious ones include The Reduced Shakespeare Companies Othello: The Rap and the musical-within-a-musical Funny Boy based on Hamlet, an off hand joke from The Producers.

Taking the plot of Romeo and Juliet, Grard Presgurvic adapted it into a musical formatand wrote the lyrics for the original French production. Since its conception, it has since been adapted into many other languages, so popular is this adaptation. These include Italian, German, English, Hungarian and Spanish, amongst others.

By: Music by Michael Reed and Moritz Schneider. Lyrics by Wolfgang Hofer. Book by Christian Struppeck.

Language: German

Summary: Based on the play The Visit by Friedrich Drrenmatt. Claire Zachanassian is anenormously wealthy older woman who returns to her hometown with a terrible bargain for the townspeople. She wants them to kill the man who got her pregnant and then abandoned her. In exchange she will give them all enough money to revitalize the decrepit town.

Watch: There is a video of the full musical on Youtube, but it has no English subtitles.

Listen: There is an official CD of the original 2014 Vienna cast. The CD is on Spotify.

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