Music as cultural amalgam in the Romeo and Juliet adaptation by Grupo Galpão

Abstract

The 1992 production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, by Galpão Group, a theater company from Minas Gerais, in Brazil, features an important moment of appropriation of one of the best-known works by the English playwright William Shakespeare. In this adaptation, music has a central space in the plot. The actors not only play their roles, but also play several instruments and sing. The presence of music in the adaptation recaptures its role and value in performances during the Elizabethan times and shows how the Galpão Group brings this information to present time, allowing a better understanding of the reception of Shakespeare’s work in local contexts. The songs selected for the soundtrack of the play form a kind of “cultural amalgam”, because they emphasize both, the greatness and strength of the tragic protagonists’ feelings in the unfolding of the plot, and are also a key element for the audience’s receptivity, whose empathy with the songs is practically immediate. Within the context of Cultural Studies, which endorse a plural and hybrid notion of the concept of culture, the insertion of typically local and popular elements such as modinhas, serestas and folk songs emphasizes the relevance and timeliness of these approaches to the Shakespearean text.