“The texts of Shakespeare are so long, so many words, so many scenes, so many characters. Some have simply cut out the middleman, as it were, and turned to the source material that inspired Shakespeare instead - the 12th-century Danish history “Gesta Danorum” for “Hamlet,” for example. Perhaps the primary reason more of them don’t succeed, Johnson explains, is that adapting his plays poses a daunting challenge for even the most talented librettist. That may be so, but the odds of any new Shakespeare opera lasting as long as “Romeo and Juliet” are slim.
“It’s almost like it’s the pinnacle of a composer’s career, to be able to write an opera based on a Shakespearean classic,” he says. The temptation is simply too alluring to resist, explains HGO dramaturg Jeremy Johnson - a notion as true today as when Gounod’s opera originally premiered in 1867. And major opera companies continue to revive the handful that have proven durable, as Houston Grand Opera will this month with Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.” For all that work, however, roughly a dozen have secured a place in the standard repertory - and even those are hardly in the top tier.Īnd yet every few years another Shakespeare-based production will pop up, hoping to earn its place alongside the Toscas and Traviatas and Figaros of the world. Literally hundreds of adaptations of his plays have appeared over the centuries, including more than 200 since World War II.
Opera has a peculiar Shakespeare problem. Houston Grand Opera's 'Romeo and Juliet' Photo: Jeff Rothman
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