BBC Proms: Roméo et Juliette, Royal Albert Hall: ‘Inspired’

For a passionate admirer of Shakespeare, Berlioz left some strangely variable tributes to the playwright. His opera Béatrice et Bénédict, currently playing at Glyndebourne, is an unsatisfactory skim through Much Ado about Nothing. The more profound Roméo et Juliette, despite many passages of striking originality, never quite knows what it wants to be.

For this year’s Shakespeare anniversary, BBC Proms has made Berlioz’s “dramatic symphony”, as he called it, one of its major offerings. The work has only had three complete performances at the Proms in 120 years. But, if it is going to be done, it is certainly best that it should be done as splendidly, and with as much ambition, as it was here.

This was a high point of the 2016 Proms so far. In his work with his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner never ceases to push artistic boundaries. Rather than just perform the “complete” symphony, he added the second prologue and choral “Requiem aeternam” (featured as extra tracks on his recording) that Berlioz omitted from his final version — each bizarre and personal, even if the additions do lengthen an already wandering score.

Gardiner also brought the whole of the Royal Albert Hall into play. Distant revellers at the Capulets’ ball sang from the gallery. The players of the ancient cymbals took the spotlight briefly at the front of the stage. The Monteverdi Choir was progressively reinforced by the far larger, and very fine, National Youth Choir of Scotland, and the finale in the Capulets’ tomb has never sounded more imposing, or more tragic. Only the confusion wrought by the hall’s acoustics when there are so many players was an occasional problem.

The three French-speaking soloists — Julie Boulianne, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt and Laurent Naouri — had the style at their fingertips. But this was primarily an evening for Gardiner and his period orchestra at their inspired best, getting the Queen Mab scherzo to flicker with firefly detail and weaving an intoxicating spell out of the love scene. Roméo et Juliette is a strange and diffuse piece. At this performance every note mattered.

bbc.co.uk/proms