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Music Review

Uncovering the Roots of an Oft-Told Love Story

Bel Canto at Caramoor The soprano Eglise Gutierrez performing in “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” at the Venetian Theater in Katonah, N.Y.Credit...Gabe Palacio

KATONAH, N.Y. — For most present-day operagoers, and even relative cognoscenti, the extent to which imperious divas once called the shots with regard to repertory and its presentation can come as a surprise. “I Capuleti e i Montecchi,” Vincenzo Bellini’s 1830 setting of the Romeo and Juliet saga, provides a perfect example. In some early performances, headstrong Romeos like Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta rejected the tomb scene Bellini fashioned for the doomed lovers, choosing to replace it with an aria from an earlier opera, “Giulietta e Romeo,” by Nicola Vaccai.

Outrageous as it might seem by today’s standards, that substitution became so common that Ricordi included the Vaccai finale in its published score to Bellini’s opera. But part of the mission behind the Bel Canto at Caramoor series (a staple of the Caramoor International Music Festival since 1997) is the restoration of bel canto works, both canonical and obscure, to something approaching an ideal form.

On Saturday, that ideal was not the original March 1830 version of the opera. Will Crutchfield, the festival’s director of opera and a scrupulous scholar, rightly relegated the Vaccai finale to one of a series of afternoon recitals, where it was performed among other Romeo-related gems and curiosities. Mr. Crutchfield, working with a critical edition published in 2003, ejected an overture he deemed unworthy of the piece and adapted a dramatic page — in which Giulietta says she is ready to embrace death — Bellini composed for a December 1830 Milanese revival.

That the opera endured a shaky adolescence is unsurprising, given that Bellini composed it in an uncharacteristic rush and under commercial duress. (Some scholars have speculated that the pressure contributed to his premature death in 1835, at 33, as the opera scholar and executive Ken Benson noted in a preconcert lecture.) Bellini had adopted portions of an extant libretto by Felice Romani, based on a source that predated Shakespeare’s play, and recycled several selections from his own previous, failed opera, “Zaira.”

What emerged, miraculously, was a taut, economical and powerful imagining of a thrice-told tale, running along familiar lines but deviating in certain details. Romeo and Giulietta remain the ardent, death-besotted lovers we know. But Tebaldo, based on the character Tybalt, here is Giuletta’s betrothed; Lorenzo, the lovers’ liaison, bears aspects of Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence and Nurse. One other character, Capellio, is Giulietta’s domineering father.

Presented in concert on a cool, clear evening, the opera readily revealed the heady ardor that proved so intoxicating to Richard Wagner, who claimed that the idea for his “Tristan und Isolde” came to him while conducting “I Capuleti e i Montecchi.”

The tenor Leonardo Capalbo was a dashing hothead as Tebaldo, mixing incisive delivery and robust heft. After an uncharacteristically wan start, the mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich rose gradually to her usual high standard as Romeo, doing the role full justice in intimate love duets and a climactic face-off with Mr. Capalbo. Two participants in the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists program, the bass-baritone Jeffrey Beruan and the baritone Benjamin Harris, did outstanding work as Capellio and Lorenzo.

But on balance, the evening belonged to the soprano Eglise Gutierrez, whose intense presence and liquid tone resulted in a grippingly eerie portrayal of Giulietta. Secure in all but her most stratospheric vaults, Ms. Gutierrez went straight to the heart of what makes bel canto repertory work: beautiful sound and inventive embellishment, made to render emotion palpable. Her delivery of the first-act aria “Oh quante volte” (which Mr. Benson had earlier called the “soprano national anthem” for its ubiquity in auditions) was beguiling; each time she took the stage, she was riveting.

Mr. Crutchfield elicited lively, buoyant work from the Caramoor Festival Chorus and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with superb solo work from the French horn player R. J. Kelley, the cellist Myron Lutzke and the clarinetist Jon Manasse.

The Caramoor International Music Festival runs through Aug. 8 at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Katonah, N.Y.; (914) 232-1252, caramoor.org.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Uncovering the Roots Of an Oft-Told Love Story. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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