By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 16 November 2005]

It was not just a muddle. It was a dismal muddle.

On Monday the Metropolitan mustered its first new production of Roméo et Juliette in 38 years. The result was cold. Gounod's ultra-Gallic, artificially sweetened, potentially poignant indulgence emerged as a surreal distortion, thanks to the Belgian director Guy Joosten and his German designing-accomplice, Johannes Leiacker.