Geoff Brown [Times Online, 23 October 2008]
One indication of a testing night at the opera is that the only bright splash of colour arrives with the curtain calls. The director Orpha Phelan, responsible for this new Opera North staging, bounced on wearing what appeared to be a map of the world, and I was glad. That blue ocean, those pink continents: such a friendly change from the black and grey jackets, the glowering balaclavas, that clothed most of the background characters in Bellini’s early opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi, a bel canto, non-Shakespearean take on the story of Romeo and Juliet.