Roméo et Juliette, Metropolitan Opera, New York

Gounod’s lush, intimate and ultra-Gallic evocation of Shakespeare’s ultimate love story may not be as popular as Faust, but it has endured 330 performances at the mighty Met as of New Year’s Eve. When seen in 2008, it was staged rather clumsily by Guy Joosten, and Plácido Domingo, himself a former Roméo, served as lax conductor. At least the central singers, Piotr Beczala and Hei-Kyung Hong, were fine. That production originated back in 2005, and now, thank goodness, it is ancient history.

On Saturday, everything changed. Gianandrea Noseda exerted propulsive spirit in the pit, and the protagonists, Vittorio Grigolo and Diana Damrau, were poignant. Although he happens to be Italian and she German, both savoured and projected the essentially introspective French style, even in a house that accommodates 4,000.

Crucially, Bartlett Sher created a dark yet vivid narrative framework in a cramped unit set designed by Michael Yeargan. Previously performed in Salzburg and Milan, this staging moves the action, and inaction, to a stylised Veronese courtyard in the 18th century. The images toy with a brave if sometimes contradictory fusion of old cliché and new surrealism. Only one intermission is allowed, and it occurs, rather surprisingly, in the middle of Act Three.

Still, when all is sung, sighed, roared, sobbed and mimed, this challenge must rise or fall with the artists portraying the young lovers. The star-crossed duo on duty here made the most of their dauntingly busy opportunities. Grigolo exuded extraordinary passion, vocally and physically, yet never neglected sensitive introspection in the process. Damrau traced the heroine’s emotional state exquisitely from girlish giddiness to tragic sacrifice, and sang with delicately shaded suavity. The two, moreover, demonstrated increasingly rapturous rapport. Elliot Madore did much with Mercutio’s Mab narrative, but Mikhail Petrenko remained stiff and oddly detached as Frère Laurent.

Cori Ellison provided fluid title-translations that quoted the original Bard neatly, also eloquently and elegantly.

To March 18, metopera.org