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In Issue 50 I reviewed the world premiere of this work, at the Amadeus Centre on 1st July 1992. Now it has been released as an album, and has attracted huge publicity (a 55 minute program on BBC 2 and features in all the serious newspapers). And I still think it’s excellent! The reviews have generally been very good, though it has not with universal acclaim.
As one reviewer observed, the concept sounds distinctly dubious and plenty of rock/pop artists have come unstuck trying collaborations with ‘serious’ music. One difference here is that this is a genuine collaboration between artists with a respect for each other’s abilities – they got together after Costello and his wife had been to several concerts by the Brodsky Quartet and they in turn had been to several of his gigs. Certainly Elvis Costello is the senior partner, but the Brodsky Quartet had made a significant contribution to the song-writing and the string instruments are used to give it a very distinctive sound.
It consists of twenty pieces, all but three of them featuring Costello’s vocals. The ‘concept’ arose from a newspaper story about a professor in Verona who replied to all letters sent to ‘Juliet Capulet’. Yes, it does start to sound pretentious again, but this turns out to be nothing more than a hook on which to hang a diverse set of songs, some of which are very funny.
It’s a commercial risk, in that it may fail to interest either Costello’s normal fans or the more ‘serious’ music enthusiast, but I’m sure he can afford that risk.
I would highly recommend you to listen to it if you can – it certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but you might be surprised.
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