What goes into the making of a major musical television event? It doesn't happen overnight--or even over weeks or months. Shows such as Great Performances' Star Crossed Lovers, which aired on WTTW, Friday, March 5, 1999 at 8 p.m., (Sunday February 14th 1999 on PBS) * take years of complex planning and execution. WTTW's Executive Producer for Cultural and Entertainment Programming, Fawn Ring, takes you behind the scenes from the moment of inspiration to the recording of this exquisite performance that pays tribute to musical literature's ill-fated couples.

What makes forbidden, unrequited, tragic love so deeply compelling? Do we experience the sweetness of love more fully when it's set against the bitterness of loss? One thing is certain: Throw an obstacle in the path of romance and everyone responds.

The list of ill-fated lovers in literature is endless. Think of Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Othello and Desdemona, and so many others. Consumed by their innocent, delicious passion, the lovers are caught in circumstances that predestine their demise. We know their fate at the outset, and perhaps because we are helpless to affect it, we suffer their pain all the more acutely.

Several of my file drawers, overstuffed with manila folders labeled Love show, Valentine's show, Romeo and Juliet, and finally Lovers, tell the story of a labor of love--literally. The earliest scribbled sketches of ideas for a new television project with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra date from mid-1994. In February 1999, the program hit the airwaves: Great Performances' Star Crossed Lovers featuring Daniel Barenboim and his majestic orchestra, soprano Renée Fleming, tenor Placido Domingo, and hosts Lynn Redgrave and Timothy Dalton.

Our program draws its name from one of the very first lines in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Ironically, Shakespeare wrote his masterpiece in mere months. It took many more individuals from WTTW and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra four years to create Star Crossed Lovers.

WTTW has broadcast a number of Chicago Symphony concerts in the past. The late Sir Georg Solti reinterpreted several of Beethoven's symphonies for national television audiences in the 1980s. Daniel Barenboim took the baton as Music Director in 1991 and explored the intricacies of Richard Strauss's revolutionary tone poems and the eloquence of Brahms's symphonies. In 1994, when Mr. Barenboim and his colleagues at Orchestra Hall approached WTTW and Great Performances to showcase the orchestra again, they proposed a program linked by a universal theme teeming with rich musical possibilities: love--romantic, passionate, intoxicating love.

Great Performances was very interested, and I immediately fell in love with the idea. The details were fuzzy, of course, but I had a striking image of how the program might look and feel. I imagined a warm, romantically lit stage supporting sublime performances by the world's finest orchestral and vocal musicians, connected by the great poetry and prose of love.

The practical side of me responded, too. Clearly, there was plenty of fine material available, and the enormous prestige of the Chicago Symphony was certain to deliver the best possible guest artists. The program was a natural!

In reality, the program evolved slowly--very slowly. Ideas were researched, adopted, researched again, and discarded. Funding was a struggle. Although Great Performances pledged to cover some of the more than $600,000 in costs, it was up to WTTW and the CSO to raise two-thirds of the budget. Often more immediate concerns--another television project under deadline at WTTW or, for the Chicago Symphony, managing a full concert season while undertaking a massive building renovation--took precedence over developing an idea that would require tremendous effort and lots of money, and might not come to fruition.

The Chicago Symphony's creative group for the project included operations manager Vanessa Moss, writer and program annotator Phillip Huscher, and artistic administrator Martha Gilmer, with Mr. Barenboim advising. We set out to take an appealing but broad subject--love--and turn it into a performance program with a clear focus and a strong narrative. At first, a recent Chicago Symphony youth concert of music inspired by the Romeo and Juliet story seemed to hold the answer. The subject was accessible and the story was...well, Shakespeare.

Finding the artists and scheduling the taping were trickier. Soloists and major orchestras are booked three to four years in advance. Singers have a finite number of roles they can perform (each voice is unique in its range, sound, and color) and limited time to learn new material. We faced the daunting challenge of finding a date for the concert in the CSO's already full schedule while searching for singers of international stature who could be available and sing the roles.

It soon became obvious to us that organizing the show around the music of the Romeo and Juliet story was unworkable. We regrouped and concentrated on finding exceptional singers, believing their repertoire would lead us naturally to a suitable concept.

In the spring of 1997, the pieces started to fall into place. The funding prospects looked promising. Mr. Barenboim and Placido Domingo had recently collaborated on an opera in Europe and were eager to perform together again. Mr. Domingo agreed to work our program into his remarkably busy schedule. Happily, the Lyric Opera of Chicago generously rescheduled two rehearsals for The Marriage of Figaro in order to make Renée Fleming's time available to us. Then, when Mr. Barenboim evaluated the musical options, Star Crossed Lovers became our theme and working title. The irresistible stories inspired by ill-fated love would provide the common thread.

The taping was set for January 26, 1998. By September 1997, we were fully immersed in production. There was much to do: We needed hosts for the program--ideally an actor-and-actress couple or real-life lovers--and the choice of director was up in the air. The revamped Symphony Center was in the process of opening, presenting us with new logistical challenges, many of them still unknown.

The next four months remain a blur. Our small staff at WTTW routinely worked 12-hour days, often six and seven days a week. We were in continual contact with our colleagues at the CSO, who maintained the same exhausting schedule. Detailed arrangements were hammered out with representatives for the singers. After an exhaustive search, we were thrilled when Lynn Redgrave agreed in late December to host the program. She suggested that her friend Timothy Dalton would be an excellent choice as co-host, and in early January he committed to join her.

The writing team was assembled, and we pored over anthologies containing Shakespeare's sonnets and the dramas Othello and Romeo and Juliet. My home and office were strewn with books of love poetry. In the last week before the performance, we wrote the script over late-night Chinese take-out dinners, with Lynn and Tim contributing suggestions via telephone.

Occasionally, obstacles arose and we grappled with surmounting them. Slow, steady progress reassured us. I regularly reminded myself of the extreme highs and lows of past productions, and made a point to say something encouraging each morning both to my colleagues and to the haggard face in my mirror.

Eight days before the concert, Mr. Barenboim's father died. The conductor cancelled his subscription concerts and flew to Israel for the funeral. He returned the night before the first rehearsal for Star Crossed Lovers, clearly tired, drained, and sad. His loss quickly wrenched my worries about the show into perspective.

The rehearsals and concert were a blur, but I vividly remember sitting in the remote production truck parked in the alley behind the new Symphony Center. It was the evening of the taping, and the control room was a scene of skillfully controlled chaos--director Bill Cosel calling out his camera shots, his associate director cueing nine cameramen to their next shot through a headset, and producer Michael Lorentz troubleshooting on a separate line. The intense patter of the control room enveloped me.

Suddenly, the noise died away. All I could see and hear was the magic on the monitor in front of me. Placido Domingo, dashing as the Moor Othello, lifted Renée Fleming's beautiful face to his--the face of Othello's beloved wife, Desdemona--and declared his love. The couple was oblivious to the tragedy that would befall them just a few scenes later in Shakespeare's powerful drama. At that moment, I heard nothing but Giuseppe Verdi's remarkable music, and the only people around were the singers, Mr. Barenboim, and his exquisite orchestra.

Watching this captivating moment, I recalled seeing it in my mind's eye several years before, when the television program idea was in its infancy. That night, four years later, we finally captured it on the screen.

A Special Note.

I would like to say a very special heart felt thank you to both Fawn Ring and Denise Kowalski (Corporate Communications, WTTW/WFMT) who have given me permission to have this review of Star Crossed Lovers here on this page and who very kindly went to the trouble of finding it and sending it to me after I had deleted it when changing over websites, from our old one to this website. I really cannot thank you both enough.

Star Crossed Lovers was produced by WTTW Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Great Performances. Special funding was provided by the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Mr. & Mrs. Sidney L. Port, and the Tom Russell Charitable Foundation, Inc.

The local presentation of the Great Performances series is made possible by Mr. Reuben Feinberg and the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation.

Above is the Musical Selections Programme from the night, please click on image for a larger clearer copy.

How to Purchase Star Crossed Lovers on video.

If you would like to purchase the video of Star Crossed Lovers then here is the postal address or telephone number you will need:-

WNET/EDUCATIONAL BROADCASTING
327 HOLLY COURT
WILLISTON,VT.05495
USA

Telephone number from within the USA 1-800-336-1917