Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet - Suite No. 2

"For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo"  

The music of the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" by Sergei Prokofiev is one of the most beautiful scores of all time. But at first, it turned out to be anything but. While preparing for a repeatedly postponed premiere, the Bolshoi Ballet dancers complained bitterly about the score, calling it "unattainable."

The ballet was born as a joint project between Prokofiev and the avant-garde Russian director Sergei Radlov, who had staged in 1926 the opera Love for Three Oranges, also by Prokofiev, and eight years later would perform a daring version of Shakespeare's play telling the story of the famous Veronese lovers. Radlov felt that to turn the story into a beautiful avant-garde ballet, only the music was missing. 

Prokofiev was formally living in Paris when he began to compose the work. He was settled there but in January 1936 he had to move to Russia to work full time there. He spent much of the year at a summer residence near a beautiful river, the Oká, where many artists associated with the Bolshoi Theater would spend their vacations.

Thus he wrote to a friend:

"I am enjoying this tranquility and peace. I go swimming in the river, play chess and tennis. I walk in the woods with our dancers, read a little, and work about five hours a day..... I haven't had much rest writing the Romeo."

The ballet was to have been premiered at the Marinsky Theater in Leningrad, but political turbulence led to a change of plans, and it had to be rescheduled for the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. This new plan also failed.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953)

Premiere
Finally, the ballet saw the light on stage in 1938, not in Russia but in Czechoslovakia. It arrived in Russia in 1940, first in Leningrad with the Kirov Ballet and, very later, in Moscow in December 1946, after the musicians of the Bolshoi Ballet were convinced that, after all, the ballet was not as "unattainable" as they had thought.

The suites
Frustrated and tired of so much postponement and delay, Prokofiev decided to extract an orchestral suite from the full score, premiering it in November 1936, two years before the ballet reached the stage. A second followed, and finally a third, in 1946. The first two became very popular in a short time, up to the present day. Of these two, the second is the one that has received the greatest favor from the ordinary public.

Romeo and Juliet - Suite No. 2
The video contains five of the six sections that make up the suite:

02:52  Montagues and Capulets (Dance of the Knights).
07:50  Young Juliet
10:56  Dance
13:08  Romeo at Juliet's house before he departs
20:08  Romeo at Juliet's tomb

Denis Vlasenko conducts Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre's Orchestra.