The star-crossed lovers of Verona have attracted audiences for hundreds of years and in scores of languages and formats since William Shakespeare's original play. There have been operas, films, ballets, poetry and musicals. One of the latest versions is the French pop opera Romeo et Juliette de la Haine e l'amour, by the composer Gerard Presgurvic, which took the French-speaking world by storm after it premiered in Paris on Jan. 19, 2001.
Several of its songs became top-20 singles on the French charts and one, Romeo and Juliet's duet Aimer, quickly turned into the "must have" for weddings around the country. Productions were mounted in more than a dozen countries.
Last year the decision was made to revive the show for an Asian tour and Damien Sargue, who originated the role of Romeo, was lured back to lead the cast again. His chiseled good looks are everything one could want in Romeo — although cheekbones sharp enough to cut diamonds appear to be almost a requirement for cast members, both male and female.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW ASPECT
The show was completely overhauled for this new tour, with new staging, costumes, three new songs added and a character dropped (the Poet). Don't expect to see a lot of doublets and tights, though. This is a modern musical, which means that women are garbed in what might be called the "medieval/gothic romantic look" with bustiers and tight ruffles, and long trenchcoats for Romeo and his friends, more Adam Ant than heavy velvets and brocades.
The leads all have terrific voices, judging from their impromptu performance at a recent press conference in Taipei, but they will be singing to a pre-recorded soundtrack. Presgurvic, whose other credits include musical productions of The Ten Commandments and Gone With the Wind, has been quoted as saying a pre-recorded soundtrack allows the company to "create a larger and more memorable impact on audiences."
The company arrived in Taipei from South Korea, where they had been since late December. Cyril Niccolai, who plays Romeo's cousin Benvolio, said the company spent close to four months in South Korea. "We started in Kwangju ... a small town, for rehearsal because there was a gymnasium where we could put the sets. It's pretty rare to find a place where we can rehearse," said the medical student turned songwriter turned actor.
"We worked three week in France and three weeks in Korea ... Twenty-first of January we started [performing] ... eight shows a week ... . For the body, the voice, its a lot ... it's a challenge," he said.
Niccolai is no stranger to Taipei having been here last year with the production of Notre Dame de Paris that played at the Taipei Arena. Judging by the number of women who turned up to see him at the press conference, he has a ready-made fan club here for this show.
"Spending time in Taipei [last year] was really great ... I'm just lucky to be able to come back," he said, adding that it was a mixed blessing since he now had to live up to expectations.
He said Romeo et Juliette is quite different from Notre Dame.
"It was a challenge for me to do it ... because there's a lot of dance in the show," he said.
One downside to this production is the venue. The theater in the Sun Yat-sen Memorial must have some of the worst acoustics of any stage in Taiwan, especially for pre-recorded music. It's not so bad if you can afford one of the good seats, but if you are higher up, you might want to take some aspirin a long with you and gulp it down during intermission.
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 Chang Hsing-hsien (張星賢) had reached a breaking point after a lifetime of discrimination under Japanese rule. The talented track athlete had just been turned down for Team Japan to compete at the 1930 Far Eastern Championship Games despite a stellar performance at the tryouts. Instead, he found himself working long hours at Taiwan’s Railway Department for less pay than the Japanese employees, leaving him with little time and money to train. “My fighting spirit finally exploded,” Chang writes in his memoir, My Life in Sports (我的體育生活). “I vowed then to defeat all the Japanese in Taiwan
RSS