Shakespearean Matters Reread in the Dramatic Musical Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet
Shakespearean Matters Reread in the Dramatic Musical Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet

Summary/Abstract: Four centuries after his death, Shakespeare thrives not only in the theatre, but also through what Bolter and Grusin call remediation: newer media achieve cultural significance by paying homage to, and refashioning, earlier media. This essay analyses how opera, symphony and musical reread veteran Elizabethan drama. Its main approach is comparative and relies on the history of mentalities. Rereading is dictated by the cultural context, the conventions of the lyrical theatre, social and political factors, as well as reception. Romeo – the icon of male romance – is interpreted by a mezzosoprano in Bellini’s I Capuleti, as the audience had become accustomed to equating male characters with a woman’s timbre due to the castrati. The confusing religious configuration of Shakespeare’s England (Greenblatt’s Will in the World) is reread, in Gounod’s 19th-century France, according to staunch Catholicism, and the lovers ask God to forgive their suicide, adding a Christian dimension absent in the play.

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