I Capuleti e i Montecchi

With I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini offers a renewed vision of the Romeo and Juliet myth, transforming love into an almost sacrilegious act in a world marked by pride and violence. Allex Aguilera’s production for the Opéra Royal Wallonie-Liège comes to the Liceu under the musical direction of Riccardo Frizza, featuring Lisette Oropesa and Raffaella Lupinacci, two leading figures in today’s bel canto scene.

The opera moves away from Shakespearean romanticism and belongs instead to the Italian tradition of conflict between rival factions, in which hatred is a destiny rather than a circumstance. Within this tense environment, the secret love between Giulietta and Romeo becomes a force that challenges social norms. To those around them, their love is almost an offence, a fracture in the established order. Love is sacred because it is free, yet it is perceived as sacrilegious because it calls into question the values that uphold family honour.

Bellini transforms this clash into music that breathes with delicacy. His long, ethereal melodies seem to suspend time itself, as though seeking to protect the lovers from a world that condemns them before listening to them. This intimate soundscape turns the drama into a reflection on vulnerability, resilience and the desire to find truth amid chaos.

The ending, marked by the suicide of the two young lovers, takes on a ritual meaning: a final act of fidelity that the world has failed to understand. Death thus becomes a space of ultimate union, where life has denied them the possibility of loving one another freely.

Allex Aguilera’s production explores Juliet’s tragic emancipation through a powerful visual metaphor: from the box that symbolizes social conventions to the sheet of water at the front of the stage, evoking the tragic destinies of doomed heroes. This aquatic scenography creates sublime mirror effects and offers the heroine a fatal liberation in which the myths of Narcissus and Ophelia resonate.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi: a staged prayer in which love seeks a silence of its own amid the noise of conflict.