Press

… An ingenious way to revive to large parts forgotten music.
Charles T. Downey | The Washington Post (USA)

Finding love has never been so much fun.
Mike Telin | clevelandclassical.com (USA)

Humor, playfulness and musicality. […] The musical performance was at a high level, following and illustrating the textual content. […] Each current madrigal felt respectfully treated and reproduced in a new, refreshing twist.
Christer Eklund | Dalarnas Tidningar  (Sweden)

A choir song experience beyond the ordinary. […] Romeo & Julia Kören offered first-class entertainment […] it was a night with all senses open, the performance did not miss anything. […] I have rarely seen so much fun and effective acting with such small gestures and manners. And this combined with a sensual choral sound with a wide musical emotional palette. […] This was the first time the Romeo & Julia Kören appeared in Skovde. May it not be the last !!
Bo Borg | Skaraborgs Allehanda  (Sweden)

[…] The singers are progressing slowly towards us and despite the fact that they sing in Italian and it is difficult to perceive the words of vocal singing, you understand absolutely everything. The choir has an absolutely incredible ability to with mines and body language convey the emotional content of their 1500^th century songs, whether delivering a humorous drinking song or Gregorian harmonies of death. […] Everything is vivid, funny, unpredictable and skillfully. […] Magic is the word.
Sophie Lossning | Norra Skåne  (Sweden)

[…] But this rather dry finding concealed a phenomenally talented, rehearsed and beautifully singing – and not least fun – group of singers, dancers, actors and musicians […] The theater and music association got together for the event and are to be congratulated for the good initiative to bring in Romeo & Julia Kören […].
Anders Falk | Säffle-tidningen   (Sweden)

The gigantic difference seems quite clear between a traditional show with Renaissance music performed by a choir and this innovative presentation, full of talent, creativity and charm. The lounge was filled to the last seat with an audience fascinated by the Swedes – with perfect bodies!

During the dinner they offered more music from their English-language repertoire. Anyone who has knowledge of choir music is well aware that the movable way this ensemble performs risk the balance in voices and, not least, pitch and tuning. However, this risk does not exist in this performance. Teatro del Lago again struck a direct hit, and showed that Chile is not only the capital, Santiago, by presenting these artists world-class, which only passed Santiago via its airport.
Mario Córdova | Las Últimas Noticias (Chile)

Decameron abounds with beautiful, seductive ladies, gullible, genuine men, proposed merchant, hypocritical priests and monks, kings and mighty shrewd grooms, all signed with masterful hand, with sumptuous humor, light irony, human warmth and teller’s joy. […] Bravo! Belissimo, we in the audience say. So beautiful to the eye and ear and in a good mood most obscene stories are told in well-jung spirit by six men and six ladies in beautiful costumes. To the accompaniment of drums and theorbo, the choir members moved gracefully around while euphony streamed toward us.
Leif A Jansson | Jönköpingsposten (Sweden)

Romeo & Julia Kören’s fresh and resonant voices, with intonation  without the slightest blemish, creates a nearly godlike choral you do not always experience in choirs.
Dag Lundin | Eskilstunakurriren (Sweden)

/ … / this both entertaining and thought-provoking performance which cross borders and hardly fit into any genre. It is in any case more a musical theater than a regular concert, where choral singing, scenic narrative and choreography interacts intimately.
Hallands Nyheter (Sweden)

With an extensive musical vocal art renaissance tones was utilized, French baroque and burlesque folk songs as well. This exquisitely performed music used simultaneously in a theatrical narrative of jealous situations and hearty love exercises. The mix of song, dance and theater in beautiful costume rings requires no special knowledge of Boccaccio’s short story collection “The Decameron”. Everything was affectionate, from the sublime to the mundane, and the solos as well as ensemble singing were top class.
Lage Olsson | Barometern (Sweden)

Playful SUPREME public contact […]
The special feature that Romeo & Julia Kören has developed is a full-fledged musical genre that combines singing, scenic narrative and choreography. […] The result is a playful performance, with excellent audience contact and a twinkle in the eye. […] Romeo & Julia Kören is a very skilled ensemble with a wide range of expression from easy and popular to the elevated sacred. But it is above all the theatrical storytelling I am most impressed by. The singers / actors have a strong stage presence and are not afraid to go the whole hog and offer burlesque humor. There is, of course, just as in Boccaccio, an underlying seriousness. The stories can be about how to draw just over the class-getter at the nose of the Church and the power of double standards and, not least, here is a clear feminist angle, obvious at a time when forced marriage and reasoning marriages were common, and the status of women completely subordinate. It’s a fun and different performance, full of joy and sensuality.
Gregor Flakierski | Allehanda (Sweden)

Romeo & Julia Kören’s musical drama performance in Macbeth gets the highest rating.
Kalmarposten (Sweden)

As a whole, Romeo & Julia Kören’s Macbeth is beautiful, touching and above all musically outstanding.
Katarina Sandström | Barometern (Sweden)

The solemn show with her closest liturgical elements succeeding  – with well-chosen piece replicas that this is recited on sounding English blank verse in fine tune with the French choral singing – to convey the grim story of lust for power and madness in terse fragments. Truly a very stylish and dramatically effective ending to this year’s Shakespeare Festival at the Hamlet stage.
Martin Lagerholm | Idag Expressen (Sweden)

ADORABLE ‘MACBETH’
/ … / Their Performance in Globe Neuss is an impressive proof that the singing actors from Sweden could not have developed in any other way.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth at about 70 minutes: from the beginning, it seems record-breaking. Several characters are not even included in the show – but they are not lacking either, especially when the acting is only a part of the performance; the second part is choral of Josquin des Prez (1450-1521) and Clément Janequin (1485-1558). The music is not just a highlight, but leads the audience to and from lingering and persons significance.
A scene jewel
Wonderfully touching it interplays between music and theater, for example when the still  happy Macbeth couple located next to each other and, with tender gestures, caressing each other’s hands, surrounded by the choir, whose many voices are raised in a tender voice. “Music expresses that which can not be said that can not be exceeded if” wrote Victor Hugo once and the truth of these words is proved time and again during the show. The Swedes enrich the festival with a small but brilliant scene jewel that is breathtaking for both ears as eyes.
The right style
Everything in this work is well thought out, from the choice of music – compositions, performed by the choir’s wonderful voices, fitting the story perfectly – to the historical costumes that underscores every character. The dark threatening hum heralding disaster; a strange buzzing and chirping sound that constantly hangs in the air.
In addition, the director Benoît Malmberg not only cleverly abbreviated the tragedy, but also skilfully borrowed from other works of Shakespeare. As in ‘Hamlet’ the king’s slayers look at their own evil actions through a ‘play the game’. Also in the right style: a man ducking into the female role of Lady Macbeth, which the audience during Shakespeare’s time were accustomed to. Also in the right style.
NGZ-Online (Germany)

It is one of the best Christmas concerts that I have seen, with a quality much higher than that of the many plastic packages that is touring around the country in December.
Kristian Ekengren | GD (Sweden)

Monteverdi’s music lends itself superbly to mild dramatizations / … / It is simply a delightful show.
Claes Wallin | Aftonbladet (Sweden)