Anybody familiar with Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet?

Cafe Society
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1

The ballet that is.

The other night “Dance of the Knights” was used for part of the end titles music on a movie we saw. Knowing vaguely where it was from I got curious about the context and found this snippet from the Royal Ballet which helps a little. It looks like it’s the ball where Romeo meets Juliet. There are two ranks, all Capulets(?) plus one in the middle (Prince Escalus?)

Any help would be appreciated.

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Sorry, all I know is that there’s a typo in the thread title, maybe a kind mod can fix it to ‘Prokofiev’ (to help with any future searches).

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Fixed.

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So, this is the music you heard? and you want to know what part of the ballet it is?

5

Can’t answer the OP’s question, but thought I drop off the ELP version they did on Black Moon:

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More or less. The Wiki article places it pretty firmly at the Capulets’ ball Romeo crashed in the middle of Scene 2. I was mainly wondering who was who.

Oops. Thanks.

7

I do love that part of the suite. I wonder what Prokofiev’s original composition sounded like before his backers made him change it. I guess they thought his ballet was too upbeat at the end?

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Not “upbeat”-- he changed it so Romeo & Juliet didn’t die, and the ballet companies wanted him to stick with Shakespeare’s ending.

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If I remember correctly, Romeo sneaks into the ball with a couple of friends, so most of the characters on stage are Capulets indeed.

By the way, this is too good an occasion not to draw your attention to two other fantastic numbers in the ballet :

  1. Dance of the Girls with the Lilies (with Prokofiev’s trademark sinuous melodies that are somehow immediately memorable despite the many unexpected accidentals)
  2. Juliet’s Funeral (a kind of slow-burn Dance of the Knights, check out the bombastic and yet moving passage at 2:05)

All in all, this is one Prokofiev absolute masterpieces, which is saying something as he wrote so much amazing music. Melodies filled with weird twists and turns but still gorgeous and catchy as hell. One of those rare composers that you can identify within a few seconds.

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The entire ballet, with Fonteyn and Nureyev dancing, is on Youtube

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Okay, cool!