Exposed Vocals Interview: Michael Justin Lee on Reimagining Romeo and Juliet as a Rock Opera and the Future of Solemn Pledge

Few stories in literary history have been as enduring as Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s timeless tale of love, fate, and tragedy. But what happens when you take that classic narrative and reimagine it through the electrifying lens of rock opera? Enter Romeo and Juliet: The Rock Opera, a bold and theatrical musical experience crafted by composer and storyteller Justin Lee. Lee, who has made a name for himself through his unique approach to “edu-tainment”—a blend of education and entertainment—has taken on the ambitious task of adapting one of the world’s most famous love stories into a high-energy, symphonic rock spectacle. The project is the latest in a growing catalog of concept albums from Solemn Pledge, the rock duo formed by Lee and powerhouse vocalist Maria Genevieve Elia.

In this exclusive interview with Exposed Vocals, Justin Lee shares the inspiration behind his reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, the creative process of blending rock intensity with theatrical storytelling, and the challenges of crafting a concept album that stays true to the emotions of the original play while bringing something entirely fresh to modern audiences. From his influences—ranging from classical composers like Erik Satie to rock legends like Eddie Van Halen—to the rewarding responses from fans, Lee takes us deep into the making of Romeo and Juliet: The Rock Opera and what the future holds for Solemn Pledge.

Exclusive Interview:

Exposed Vocals: What inspired you to reinterpret Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a rock opera, and what challenges came with adapting such an iconic story into music?

Michael Justin Lee: What a great question! There’s a long backstory.

My starting motivation was a desire to create “edu-tainment,” entertainment that hopefully also helps draw the audience to learn more about the subject. My own children were my first audience.

It all started when they were in elementary school learning American history. I felt that they were learning the historical facts but weren’t getting a strong enough feel of the importance of the Revolutionary War, a topic that’s been of tremendous fascination to me all my life. So on a whim, I wrote a young adult historical novel about a brother and sister (proxies for my own children) who faked their ages to enlist in General Washington’s army. In the story, they wind up undergoing all of the battles and difficulties that General Washington’s soldiers endured. My goal was to put into personal context (despite the characters being fictional) the pivotal events of the founding of the United States. I hoped that the book would assist my children’s appreciation of America’s founding, and I thought maybe some other people might like it too. I entitled the book, Fighting for Freedom and General Washington. It’s sold on Amazon and over ten years since initial publication, I’m still receiving royalties from it.

I then proceeded to expand my edu-tainment into filmmaking. Over the next few years, I wrote, produced, and directed modernized cinematic interpretations of the Biblical story of Salomé, the ancient Euripidean tragedy Medea, the ancient Sophoclean tragedy Antigone and the historical story of Joan of Arc. These movies were eventually picked up for sale by the three dominant Transactional Video-on-Demand platforms, Apple iTunes Films, Google Play Movies, and Amazon Video, in over 80 countries across six continents.

But I was just getting warmed up. I then turned to my first love, music. I met the brilliant singer Maria Genevieve Elia through mutual friends in the hard rock community and formed Solemn Pledge. I told her what I wanted to do and she was wonderfully excited. At the time of this interview, in addition to Romeo and Juliet, the following rock opera concept EPs have been among our creations:

• Mulan: A Soldier’s Story
• Peter Pan: The Rock Opera
• Cleopatra: Queen of Egypt
• Joan of Arc: Savior of France
• Lady Macbeth: The Rock Opera
• Anna May Wong: A Screen Icon’s Story

Like our Romeo and Juliet, all are edu-tainment and also like our Romeo and Juliet, all are streaming on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and on over 150 other platforms worldwide.

Our newest album, No Traveler Returns, is our first release that is not a dedicated concept album. But even so, it is still edu-tainment. The title song is my interpretation in heavy metal of Hamlet’s classic To be or not to be soliloquy. In fact, the title, no traveler returns, comes from words in that soliloquy. Another song is Unleashed, which tells the story of Jekyll and Hyde. The reception for both songs and their accompanying music videos has been such that we’ve decided to make our next release a concept piece about the classic story of Jekyll and Hyde. It is our hope that it will drop on March 15, the suitably ominous Ides of March!

Exposed Vocals: The fusion of pop rock, symphonic metal, and theatrical storytelling creates a distinct sound. How did you develop this style, and what were some of your key influences?

Michael Justin Lee: I can’t say that I ever set out to create a distinct sound. Rather, it resulted organically from the songs themselves and my way of composing music. For instance, several times in our work, I’ve had song ideas that came from a very bitter place, like the calamity of Juliet’s suicide or Cleopatra’s.

I felt songs that can do proper justice to these scenes cannot be, for instance, speed metal. To me, a song’s vibe itself is part of the storytelling. So I composed a nasty blues-rock song that I could envision Cleopatra wailing before killing herself.

For Juliet, I felt differently because her story is one of tragic romance. It took me some time to work through. I finally realized that one specific piece of music perfectly captured the tragedy of Juliet’s suicide to me, and it was not rock or blues. Rather, it was a piece of classical music, Gymnopédie Number 3 by the French composer Erik Satie. Just listen to it and see if you can avoid crying. I adapted it slightly for the lyrics I wrote, and to date, it is one of only two songs I’ve written for which I am not credited for the music. In fact, its official registration with the US Copyright Office is:

Lyrics by Michael Justin Lee
Music by Erik Satie (1866 – 1925)

That’s right. For the song, Juliet’s Gymnopédie, I am credited as having collaborated with Erik Satie!

So to recap my answer to your question, I do not seek to develop a style. Instead, I let it flow from the story I am telling with the song, with my starting point being the music of the great rock guitar gods, my personal favorite being Eddie Van Halen. But like with Juliet’s Gymnopédie, my influences can extend beyond my guitar heroes or even beyond rock itself, to whatever is perfect for the song.

Exposed Vocals: Maria Genevieve Elia takes on the impressive challenge of performing both male and female roles. How did you approach this from a vocal and storytelling perspective?

Michael Justin Lee: I am truly blessed that Maria joined me to form Solemn Pledge. She is a truly gifted artist! It isn’t only her vocal range that is expansive, so is her performance range. This is critical for my style of music composition, which is storytelling. In Maria, I found someone who absolutely and completely shares my passion for rock music and who can not only sing magnificently but can truly perform and act my songs like an actress would. With her talents, I did not need to have male singers perform the songs for the male roles. All I had to do was to compose the male songs in a lower key, knowing that Maria could easily reach it.

There’s some need for suspension of disbelief because it’s obvious that it’s a woman singing in a lower register for the male roles, but since it’s a concept album and not the soundtrack of a stage or screen production, I thought that’d be quite acceptable.

Exposed Vocals: Your compositions have been described as cinematic and deeply emotional. How do you strike the balance between theatrical drama and rock intensity in your songwriting?

Michael Justin Lee: Thank you for saying so! It pleases me tremendously that you find our music deeply emotional because that is my very intention. I assume any artist in any artform wants to reach people emotionally.

I don’t think of my songs’ theatricality and musicality being in balance but rather as being in tandem. This is not just a matter of semantics. I feel that the two should complement each other from beginning to end. For instance, I don’t think one can calibrate a song’s theatricality to 70% intensity and therefore must match its musicality with 70% intensity as well. Even if possible, this wouldn’t be needed if one composes with the song’s storyline, and therefore also the appropriate emotional point of view, very clear from the start.

Exposed Vocals: Precious Juliet is a standout track that captures the passion and tragedy of the story. Can you walk us through your creative process in bringing that song to life?

Michael Justin Lee: Oh, thank you! Precious Juliet is indeed a very critical song. That song conveys the pivotal point in the story just after Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love. Precious Juliet by Romeo comes right after Already My Husband by Juliet. Together, the two songs are proxies for the balcony scene wherein Juliet yearns, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

To compose these songs, I had to put myself in the position of Romeo and Juliet at that point. This wasn’t easy because I needed something much harder-hitting than commonplace love songs. I watched over and over again my favorite movie version of Romeo and Juliet, the one by Franco Zeffirelli starring Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, for inspiration.

What exactly were they saying on the balcony? For these two, who found love at first sight, they were saying far more than just how they felt about each other. They were already planning their entire lives together. I felt Juliet would already be considering Romeo as her husband, hence that song’s title.

Then immediately after hearing Juliet sing this, I felt Romeo would be expressing his utter exhilaration. He would be thanking God for bringing this angel into his life, his Precious Juliet.

Exposed Vocals: Rock operas are not as common in today’s music industry. What do you think sets Romeo and Juliet: The Rock Opera apart, and how do you see the genre evolving?

Michael Justin Lee: You’re absolutely correct that rock operas aren’t common in today’s music scene, and I think that’s unfortunate. Because with the tremendous range of the styles of rock music, from soft rock to speed metal, very much can be conveyed emotionally.

That leads to what sets our music apart. In our rock operas, since we tell the great stories of history and literature, focusing on the entire range of human emotions of the characters in them, Maria and I employ all the sub-genres of rock music as necessary. I think a band like Solemn Pledge that creates such a broad spectrum of rock music is rare, and fans like our versatility and variety.

As for how I see the genre evolving, the most I can say is that I hope that some rock operas will make it onto the Great White Way, which in turn might spur more creators to try their hand at it. At the end of the day, if we creators give the public entertainment that they like, the genre will blossom.

Exposed Vocals: Your work has been compared to Jesus Christ Superstar and The Wall. Do you consider those influences, and how does your project differentiate itself from classic rock operas?

Michael Justin Lee: Oh yes, I certainly do consider those two classic rock operas to be influences. I once even had the great pleasure of seeing Jesus Christ Superstar in London’s West End. But even more influential on me than those two great ones is The Who’s Tommy. That rock opera was made into an excellent movie and has been produced on Broadway and the West End, which further evidences that a dormant market exists.

The Who’s slightly lesser-known rock opera, Quadrophenia, was also influential on me. In fact, now that I hear myself say that, Quadrophenia might actually have been an even bigger influence on me than Tommy because Quadrophenia has two of my favorite and greatest rock songs of all time in it. The Real Me featuring John Entwistle’s impossibly powerful driving bass line perfectly sets the stage for the tragic story that follows, while Love, Reign o’er Me ends the story with a beautiful and equally tragic song that expresses the protagonist’s heartfelt nihilism.

Up to this point, our rock operas have been different from them because those were created from entirely original stories. Having started as I did, I haven’t yet completed a rock opera with an original storyline, but I have something in the works.

Exposed Vocals: Your latest release, No Traveler Returns, shifts away from concept albums. How does this new direction reflect your artistic evolution, and what was the inspiration behind it?

Michael Justin Lee: Evolution is indeed the best way to describe our newest release’s direction. In fact, it’s related to my answer to your previous question. For this album, I wrote the ten songs not for any one established story concept, but for ten different ones, and then see where it goes. I mentioned earlier how Unleashed on this album has led us to create a concept album about a female Jekyll and Hyde for our next release.

Another song Valhalla Glory is about the Valkyries of Nordic mythology and the song You’ll Be Mine is about Samson and Delilah. But others are for stories of my own creation. To an extent, each song’s reception by the public will determine if we take any song further for future projects.

Exposed Vocals: What has been the most surprising or rewarding response you’ve received from fans or critics since the album’s release?

Michael Justin Lee: Maria and I are truly overjoyed by the positive reception we’ve received for our new album! This is made all the more gratifying because we’ve only just started our publicity campaign. But this must be said, Maria and I are in full agreement that even if public response for what we create isn’t gratifying, we will continue to make our music. Because at the end of the day, we are first and foremost making music to let our own souls sing. Anything else that may result are welcome bonuses.

Exposed Vocals: Looking ahead, do you envision Romeo and Juliet: The Rock Opera being adapted into a live theatrical production? And what’s next for Solemn Pledge?

Michael Justin Lee: You ask a very timely question! Just one week ago today, I was in contact with a VERY major theatrical company about this very topic! There’s nothing that can be said now but my hopes are very high! I’ll be happy to let you know as soon as I know anything at all.

As Justin Lee and Solemn Pledge continue to push the boundaries of rock opera, Romeo and Juliet: The Rock Opera stands as a testament to their passion for storytelling through music. By fusing the grandeur of Shakespearean tragedy with the power of symphonic rock, Lee has crafted an experience that resonates with both fans of classic literature and rock enthusiasts alike. With the success of their latest album, No Traveler Returns, and the anticipation surrounding their upcoming Jekyll and Hyde concept album, it’s clear that Solemn Pledge is only gaining momentum in the world of theatrical rock.

Looking ahead, the possibility of Romeo and Juliet: The Rock Opera being adapted for the stage adds an exciting new dimension to the project, and fans will no doubt be eager to see how it evolves. Whether through new concept albums, theatrical productions, or future collaborations, Justin Lee and Maria Genevieve Elia are proving that rock opera still has a powerful place in today’s music landscape. As they continue to create, innovate, and inspire, one thing remains certain—Solemn Pledge is far from finished telling stories that move both hearts and minds.