ABSTRACT
In order to understand how the scene operates as melodrama, we first need to have in mind Berlioz's actual staging of the whole piece. The stage itself is used for instrumental and non-personal music performed by the orchestra; the two soloists, who are voices but not characters; and the Prologue chorus, which narrates events in a manner familiar from Shakespeare's plays. There is a gradual shift through the work from the visible but impersonal singers introduced at the beginning, through the purely orchestral dream sequence, to a conclusion in the style of a grand opera, but without the mise-en-scene. The platform is reserved for the characters. At the conclusion, the split chorus of Capulets and Montagus comes onto the platform, as does the chorus from the Prologue, now representing the citizens of Verona, or perhaps just mankind, Berlioz refers to them as 'the crowd', witnesses to the oath in which they also participate.
