In “Je veux vivre,” Noseda suddenly changed course for his prima donna. Damrau is a singer of uncertain technique and a compensatory inclination to interpretive mannerism. Her floppy-voiced turn through “Ecoutez!“, etc., its solutions devised around the necessity of avoiding any strong positional engagement and tonal center, got things off to a scary start, and at this important juncture she hadn’t found her footing. Her way of managing this is to exaggerate, comically at times, whatever moments of transition or rubato may be granted her, while fussing with extremes of unsupported pianissimo she hopes will be received as artistically sensitive. (Her Juliette was traversed with the same tactics she had adopted for her Leïla in Pêcheurs de Perles—sneak through the decorative early going, sustain the lyrical passages with watery soft singing and many mini-effects, and then, late in the show, sing out in “full lyric” mode, to better effect, and with a closer resemblance to the singer she seemed to be at the time of her Met debut, as Strauss’s Aïthra.) Noseda went all in with her for the waltz song, including a parodically drawn-out return to Tempo I following the ritard at “avant de l’effeuiller.” I’d never heard the ariette  so misshapen and undersung.

A brief colloquy among the Nurse, Gregorio, and the returning Roméo. Then, with Roméo’s impulsive “De grâce, demeurez!”, we’ve come to the first of the protagonist-couple duets, the Madrigal “Ange adorable,” and the coup de grâce on Sher’s treatment of Act I. While in “Je veux vivre” the decision between private and public is determinative, with the Madrigal this isn’t so.  Even if the couple is left alone on an empty stage, their behavior is conditioned by awareness of the celebration going forward all about, and the possibility of being interrupted at any moment. Their first exchange is in direct line of descent from the coded declarations of the troubadours and their ladies. Full of insinuations about touching hands, saintly lips, vows, and sinful transgression, its behavior is governed by the formalized etiquette of the circumstances, with any physical contact dictated by the Madrigal’s dance pattern, its appearance blameless, its electricity held in, the current of feeling that runs beneath it conveyed by lovingly shaped flowerings of tone. The voices may suggest emotion. The bodies must constrain it.

In Sher’s staging, the Madrigal becomes outwardly flirtatious foreplay between a boy and a girl whose sense of irony mocks the etiquette they are observing (and who, by the way, haven’t learned to dance—they just sort of walk around each other). It acts out the coded messages, most prominently Juliette’s teasing reference to Roméo as “the prostrate pilgrim.” Sure enough, he spreads out his cloak and lies down before her; she steps over him. If done with utmost solemnity under safely private conditions, this might play as believable ritual. Here, it removes all the tension from the scene, from the beginning of the opera’s central relationship. It’s a contradiction of basic conditions established in the text. Yet it can also read as endearingly “natural” behavior to an uncurious contemporary eye—two kids playing lords and ladies. Audiences recognize it from their customary entertainments, if not from life, and give it a chuckle. Which is what I mean about faux-realism.