ROMEO UND JULIA - ROYAL CLASSICAL BALLET

In the organizer's words:

Romeo and Juliet (after William Shakespeare) is Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev's longest and best-known ballet and is generally regarded as his most important contribution to the genre. The plot of the ballet faithfully follows that of the play.

The fast-paced, cinematic alternation of lively moments, scenes and tragic entanglements makes for an exciting evening of ballet.

Life ● Love ● Death

Probably the most famous lovers in world literature are at the center of this ballet production. Shakespeare's tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" has inspired generations of artists like no other since its premiere in 1597. Whether literature, film or opera - every artistic genre has revisited the tragedy of the lovers of Verona to this day. In particular, there have been many attempts to use dance and pantomime to create this story of a secretly blossoming love that cannot find fulfillment due to the intolerance of deadly enemy family clans. A colorful, glowing score whose dancing impetus brilliantly captures the essence of Shakespeare's tragedy, the clash of love and hate, the juxtaposition of tenderness and violence.

The work was originally intended to be commissioned by the Leningrad Kirov Theater, but after the theater management withdrew from the project at short notice, the composer wrote it in the summer and autumn of 1935 on behalf of the Bolshoi Theater in the theater's guest house in Polenovo near Moscow. "Romeo and Juliet" was premiered on December 30, 1938 in Brno in what was then Czechoslovakia. By 1946, Prokofiev had completed a total of three suites for orchestra as well as piano arrangements of some of the pieces.

The rich and varied instrumentation as well as the rhythmic complexity of the score still pose challenges for orchestra and dancers. The famous "Dance of the Knights" with its dotted, ponderous rhythms is now better known as a quasi-symphonic theme. In contrast to this are the simultaneously tender and youthful, lively themes in connection with Juliet's awakening to love.

In contrast to Tchaikovsky's classical ballet productions, such as "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty", whose story and content seem strongly tied to the spirit of European Romanticism, the world of fairy tales and classical ballet, "Romeo and Juliet" has the undeniable advantage of offering itself for further development through Shakespeare's timeless and almost archetypal concept of the love tragedy.

An opulent feast for the senses, a great musical experience that convinces with both technical ease of dance and sensitive romanticism, creating leaps of emotional tension and images of tender intimacy that will linger in the memory for a long time.

Ballet in two acts - Music: Sergei Prokofiev