Long ago and far away, which is to say in the ’60s and over on the Upper East Side, there was a benevolent organization called the SPCCG—Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Charles Gounod. It was founded by Patrick J. Smith (author of The Tenth Muse, editor and publisher of The Musical Newsletter, editor of Opera News, etc.) and a few of his friends. The Society established an award for good services rendered to the eponymous cause, and if memory serves did actually bestow this award on one or two occasions. I was a little miffed at never being designated a recipient, having on several occasions come to the defense of Faust‘s already-beleaguered reputation, and having said nice things about Mireille as well. But such are the slights we must learn to ignore.

The SPCCG was essentially a waggish, donnish enterprise of a sort whose cultural moment has no doubt passed. But beneath this tone was the entirely valid perception that the long-venerated works of this master were being critically condescended to because of a failure to distinguish between the deficiencies of performance and those of the works themselves. And things have not improved for C.G. over the intervening decades. Indeed, a correspondent recently wrote me about a conversation with the artistic director of an important American opera company who stated flatly that Faust should not be done anymore, because we no longer believe in that sort of salvation, the Devil, and all the rest that goes with that. In its last two productions at the Met, the opera could not be located amid the depredations of its directors (Andrei Serban and Des McAnuff)—D.O.A. before even approaching the matters of conducting and singing.

When we’ll see Faust again, and how, is a matter of pure, dark speculation. Meanwhile, though, Gounod’s other big hit, Roméo et Juliette, is returning to the Met repertory. It’s not on my list of must-sees this year, but I’ve been making some notes, rather in the SPCCG spirit, about both the piece and its presentation, as revealed in the present Met production and the one that preceded it. Looking back over these sets of notes, I’m struck by how similar their observations are, despite changes up and down the line in physical production, musical direction, and casting. And for some time I’ve been intrigued by the fact that regardless of textual decisions, some means are always found to throw Act I under the bus. One reason for the oft-heard complaint that Roméo is nothing but a series of lyrical love duets, and thus comes off as a pressed flower of an opera, is that everything else in the work, of which there is quite a lot, is curtailed either by redaction or in the execution. So, especially in a time when we are unlikely to experience Romantic transcendence in those duets, we might ask what it is that Act I is meant to accomplish, and what light that might throw on the rest of the opera.

First, for anyone who might be confused by recent experience: Roméo, as laid out in its score, is a five-act grand opera. The acts are closed forms; each ends with a decisive “button,” thus implying an intermission to follow. With the cuts in Act IV that were formerly standard (Juliette’s Potion aria and the Epithalamium, in addition to the permanently exiled ballet), it was easy to run Acts IV and V together, leaving only three intermissions. Now, with those numbers restored in whole or in part, the entire show is granted but a single intermission, which chops the score in two in the middle of Act III. So when I speak of “Act I,” I refer to what is now the first of three scenes in the very lengthy stretch before the intermission. This is the scene at Capulet’s ball, and it’s not short, preceded as it is by the overture and choral Prologue. It contains five numbers, but that’s somewhat deceptive, since the first takes in everything before Mercutio’s Queen Mab ballad. In terms of audience experience, the act comprises four important solos (Juliette’s brief but showy introduction, Capulet’s song in praise of youth and dance, Queen Mab, and Juliette’s Waltz Song) and one duet (the madrigal “Ange adorable” at the lovers’ first meeting). These episodes are bracketed by choral and dance music and joined by very concise sections of recitative, originally conceived as spoken dialogue but never so presented, even in the premiere production (1867) at the Théâtre Lyrique. The atmosphere is festive. Tempo indications are prevailingly on the quick side, and triple meters predominate.