With Romeo and Juliet created by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) in 1839, a work that stubbornly defies every category. Not quite an opera, despite Shakespeare's omnipresence. Not an oratorio, despite the prominent role for chorus and soloists. And hardly a classical symphony, even though the composer himself called it a dramatic symphony. After witnessing a performance of Romeo and Juliet in Paris—with Irish actress Harriet Smithson as Juliet—Berlioz became so obsessed with Shakespeare that in this score he created his most personal musical universe. Ironically, Smithson would later become his wife, though their marriage proved as turbulent as Shakespeare's lovers' fate was tragic.
This capricious hybrid form of symphonic poetry, theatrical imagination, and vocal drama makes Romeo and Juliet one of Berlioz's most visionary works. Wagner later called it a revelation. Rightly so, for the French composer opens up the symphony here into an almost cinematic experience, where colors, contrasts, and emotions constantly clash and interweave. The two main characters are never sung but embodied by the orchestra itself—because, according to the composer, words simply fell short. Three soloists and two choruses surround them as witnesses and commentators.
A contemporary reading of Shakespeare
That this very score was placed on the music stands of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra felt like a bold yet logical choice. In a scenic reading by director Aïda Gabriëls, the work gained an additional theatrical dimension without the music itself fading into the background. Gabriëls is known in her own country for transdisciplinary projects she creates as resident artist at Muziektheater Transparant. Her approach started from the ambiguity Berlioz himself had created: in a mise-en-espace that deliberately uses the concert hall as a theatrical frame, she positioned the mass—chorus, orchestra, singers—as a collective body from which individuals barely manage to emerge. Writer Dominique De Groen added new texts that were not sung but readable via projection as inner voices from the mass. Gabriëls continuously sought the contemporary relevance of the story: hatred, polarization, and reconciliation were not abstract concepts but palpable social tensions. Do we need conflict or violence to find common ground?—this central question drives both her work and Berlioz's.
The video projections opened the narrative to a broader social context. References to collective phenomena, ranging from football crowds to images reminiscent of mafia films, made the conflict between the two families recognizable for a contemporary audience. Not every projection was equally necessary, and the repetition of certain images sometimes proved distracting, but some moments were visually striking, such as the death scenes (from familiar productions and films) and the closing images where the conductor and orchestra appeared as a hazy, almost dreamlike projection.
A substitute with authority
That evening, however, Cornelius Meister was the focus, stepping in last-minute for the ailing Dima Slobodeniouk. As Generalmusikdirektor of Stuttgart State Opera and a welcome guest in the great opera houses, he took the podium with admirable composure. He understood that Berlioz above all needs breathing room and transparency: no heavy-handed romantic bombast, but a flexible building of tension in which every orchestral color carries meaning. Berlioz was approached here not as a composer of mere romantic eruptions, but as a master of color and architecture. Meister let the long instrumental lines breathe without ever losing the dramatic pulse. From the turbulent opening passages alone it became clear how astutely he guarded the work's architecture. That he took on this complex score at the last possible moment made the achievement all the more impressive. Meister conducted with infectious drive and visible engagement, as if he had had the work in his fingers for years. Under his direction, the performance gained a particularly convincing interpretation. We hope to see him often on the podium in Antwerp.
The ASO responded with a performance that sounded both technically polished and emotionally charged. The strings found their way effortlessly between ethereal softness and razor-sharp drama, excelling in Berlioz's endless shifts between stillness and eruption. In the famous love scene—kept purely instrumental because the composer found the human voice too crude for it—an almost hallucinatory beauty emerged: Meister brought out the melodic lines compellingly without becoming sentimental, with an almost Mahlerian glow in the orchestra. The woodwinds gave the score that typically Berliozan nervousness, while the brass never sounded gratuitously spectacular but provided precisely the heroic grandeur this music requires. The abrasive passages between the Capulets and Montagues gained a raw energy that felt uncomfortably contemporary. Berlioz's orchestral fantasy—at times visionary in pointing toward Wagner and even Debussy—came fully into its own here. All sections of the orchestra delivered performances of the highest level, making this rendition one of the strongest ASO evenings of the season in purely orchestral terms as well.
Chorus and space as dramatic principle
Berlioz did not write his choruses as decorative ornament but as a dramatic engine. The Octopus Symphony Choir proved to be an excellent partner: compact in sound, rhythmically alert, and with sufficient textual expression to convincingly carry the complex and capricious passages. The Laurens Collegium likewise functioned seamlessly within the two-chorus whole, with Gabriëls giving shape to the contrast between the two families not only musically but also visually. Her mise-en-espace moreover played inventively with the hall's space and delivered striking acoustic effects. A smaller ensemble of singers suddenly began singing from the center of the orchestra, immediately filling the hall with sound and subsequently taking on a role as a crystal-clear commentary voice on and in front of the stage. When the soloists sang from the first balcony, this subtly alluded to Shakespeare's iconic balcony scene. The gradual visibility of the full chorus behind a transparent curtain intensified the dramatic buildup without diverting attention from the music. The final image, where both choruses first stood as hostile camps opposing each other before ultimately forming the same line, gave the idea of reconciliation a simple yet powerful theatrical translation. These were often small interventions, but those thoughtful details made the scenic concept particularly convincing.
The soloists formed a homogeneous ensemble. Kai Rüütel-Pajula impressed with a warm, richly nuanced mezzo voice and an effortless expressivity that immediately brought color to her contribution. Bryan Register convinced with a clear tenor, flexible in phrasing and with sufficient dramatic edge to maintain the tension. Nahuel Di Pierro gave as friar Laurence with his deep, sonorous bass a quiet authority to the whole and thus provided exactly the necessary human and moral depth within the ensemble.
Between Reflection and Music
Gabriëls' scenic interventions were not all equally necessary – the conceptual layer of De Groen's texts sometimes pushed itself a bit too insistently to the foreground – but they rarely disrupted the musical tension and saved the work from becoming merely a museum piece. The projected translations of Berlioz's French texts added genuine value, allowing the audience to follow the story and dramatic development closely. The additional reflective texts during the longer orchestral passages were intellectually engaging and aligned with the thematic content, though they sometimes demanded so much attention that focus shifted temporarily away from the music. This tension between concept and music was occasionally noticeable, but remained secondary to the powerful musical and theatrical impact of the performance.
A work that continues to move
What ultimately made this performance convincing was the effortless way in which music and drama converged. Berlioz's score sounded here not like a historical curiosity, but as a living, breathing work full of dangerous beauty. More than a century and a half after its creation, it remains a composition that sweeps its audience between ecstasy and destruction. Gabriëls and Meister laid that wound bare without mercy, yet without sacrificing the sensual beauty of the music. In this way, the performance became not only the promised feast for eye and ear, but also a confronting mirror of an era in which reconciliation has once again become a laborious concept. The sustained applause spoke for itself. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra deserves all praise for programming this rarely performed score in its complete form and for choosing to breathe new life into it through a thoughtfully conceived mise-en-espace. The result was a performance that made a profound impression both musically and theatrically. Romeo and Juliet Berlioz's hybrid masterpiece comes alive in Antwerp
