Review: San Diego Opera’s ‘Romeo et Juliette’ a lavish feast for the eyes and ears

Tenor Pene Pati, foreground, and soprano Nicole Cabell in San Diego Opera's "Romeo et Juliette."

The lushly cast production, which opened Saturday and plays through April 3 at the San Diego Civic Theatre, is French grand opera at its finest

March 28, 2022 2:05 PM PT

If the past two years seemed like an artistic desert for local opera fans, San Diego Opera’s “Roméo et Juliette” feels like an oasis.

The lushly cast production, which opened Saturday at the San Diego Civic Theatre, is French grand opera at its finest, with gorgeous singing and music, a large chorus, stunning scenery, lavish costumes, sword-fighting and even ballet dancing.

But the scene-stealing highlight of the production is the company debut of New Zealand tenor Pene Pati as Roméo. Pati burst into the national spotlight in September 2019 when he subbed in for an ailing Roméo at San Francisco Opera and walked away with the show. Pati has everything you’d want in an up-and-coming opera tenor — a sweet, warm and robust voice, delicacy in delivering pianissimo notes, acting and sword-fighting skills and a charming, boyishly endearing personality that’s a perfect fit for this teenage role.

Also excellent was Nicole Cabell, whose supple and creamy coloratura soprano voice pirouetted effortlessly through the melismatic vocal role of Juliette. Compared to Pati’s exuberant Romeo, she played her role with reserve.

Nicole Cabell in San Diego Opera's "Romeo et Juliette."

Charles Gounod’s 1867 opera faithfully follows the plot of William Shakespeare’s play, but it allows the growing relationship between these two young Veronese lovers to be told through memorable arias and duets.

Pati’s standout aria is “Ah! lêve-toi soleil,” where Roméo spots Juliette on the balcony and begs her to “arise” and “appear.” He sings with hopeful urgency and a sense of innate joy that seems to bubble out of his body — particularly during his jubilant curtain-call on opening night. And Cabell, who has sung the role of Juliette many times, makes easy work of her character’s famous waltz aria “Je veux vivre” (“I want to live”). Together, their voices blended beautifully in the lark vs. nightingale love scene, “Va! je t’ai pardonné! ... Nuit d’hyménée.”

Pene Pati as Romeo and Adrian Kramer as Tybalt fight in San Diego Opera's "Romeo et Juliette."

San Diego Opera’s new principal conductor, Yves Abel, led San Diego Symphony musicians in a lovely and nuanced performance of the opera’s beautiful score. And director Matthew Ozawa — working with eye-popping flower and dagger scenery by William Boles and costumes by Sarah Bahr — filled the stage with poetic tableaus of romantic love that buds, blooms and then withers in the face of a pointless rivalry and violence between Verona’s Capulet and Montague families.

The three-hour opera offers musical highlights for all of the principal singers, including the fiery tenor Adrian Kramer as Juliette’s cousin Tybalt; rich-voiced baritone Hadleigh Adams as Romeo’s doomed kinsman Mercutio; mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit in the pants role as Romeo’s page, Stephano; and big-voiced bass-baritone Ted Pickell as the Duke of Verona.

For San Diegans who have been missing grand opera that fills the stage and orchestra pit like it used to before the pandemic, “Roméo et Juliette” is a welcome return to old times.