Bellini I Capuleti e i Montecchi Buxton Festival, July 2016 Director Harry Fehr Lighting Simon Corder

Reviews 

the production had its own real sense of elegance. ***** (Planet Hugill)

Designs by Yannis Thavoris emphasise the military aspects with barbed wire defences,along with guns and uniforms for the Capulets including their chaplain, all very suitably lit by Simon Corder. This simple setting provided a fine background for the singers... (Mark Ronan)

Harry Fehr's production for the Buxton Festival brings the action forward to the modern day, with the Capulet army in berets and bearing machine guns and the set design combines the luxury of a palazzo – glossy floors, finely upholstered chairs – with hints of the ongoing conflict, most visible in the huge rings of barbed wire at the top of the walls. The opera opens with a coffin at the centre, containing the son of Capellio, the Capulet leader, and ends similarly with Giulietta's coffin centre-stage. In the middle two acts, the furniture is moved around a little to give us a hall for Giulietta's wedding to Tebaldo. It's an effective updating that makes one reflect on more recent unnecessary conflicts – a timely production. **** (bachtrack)

The festival’s second offering, Harry Fehr’s staging of Bellini’s Romeo and Juliet opera, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, is more consistently assured. Yannis Thavoris’s set presents a barbed-wire fenced military base that doubles as the Capulet townhouse, while his costumes define the mutually antagonistic groups of Capulet and Montague paramilitaries. (The Guardian)