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.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
RSS