Today Sergei Prokofiev’s score for Romeo and Juliet is considered to be the quintessential rendering of William Shakespeare’s timeless tale and one of the most popular of all ballet compositions. However, Prokofiev’s original composition of Romeo and Juliet was heavily criticized and it was many years before it was finally accepted and performed by a ballet company.

In 1934, the Russian-born Prokofiev was commissioned by the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad to write a score, possibly based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, to be choreographed by Rostislav Zacharov. The Communist regime demanded that the end of Shakespeare’s play be changed and that the ballet be given a happy ending, to which Prokofiev took offence. The score was written specifically as a narrative dance-drama and was meticulously matched to the scenario by Prokofiev and the Kirov’s stage director, Sergey Radlov. It was to be a lavish, spectacular production and Prokofiev’s first full-length ballet.

Though Prokofiev’s score was completed on September 8, 1935, problems soon led to the Kirov Theatre backing out of the project. It was then to be staged by Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. However, the Bolshoi found the music unsuitable for dance and rejected it. The dancers, used to the tuneful dance rhythms of Tchaikovsky, had difficulty with Prokofiev’s unconventional rhythms and orchestration.

The first performance of Romeo and Juliet to Prokofiev’s music took place in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on December 30, 1938, with choreography by the little-known Vania Psota. Two years later, the Kirov Ballet, following numerous discussions with Prokofiev and alterations in the score, premiered Romeo and Juliet to choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky. The score was considered radical by many Russian musicians, who feared the worst upon the ballet’s premiere. The timing was right, however, and the ballet proved a resounding success and was later staged in Moscow by the Bolshoi Ballet in 1946.

Few composers have created full-length ballet scores, particularly in the 20th century. As such, Prokofiev follows in the tradition of such well-known ballet composers as Tchaikovsky. Choreographer Lavrovsky wrote: “Prokofiev carried on where Tchaikovsky left off. He developed and elaborated the principles of symphonism in ballet music.” The score for Romeo and Juliet is both dramatic and symphonic, not unlike Tchaikovsky’s scores for Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. But, whereas Tchaikovsky gave musical selections dance names — pas de deux, pas de cinq, Russian dance — and interspersed his work with entertaining dance divertissements, Prokofiev linked his composition of 53 sections or items with the dramatic rather than the dance elements, naming his musical selections after the characters and situations they depicted. So Romeo and Juliet’s plot and music are closely intertwined; its dances are not simply entertainment but an integral part of the drama.

As in Adolphe Adam’s score for Giselle, musical leitmotifs, portraits of the characters, are also prevalent in Romeo and Juliet, though in a less structured fashion and with greater variance and levels of depth. These leitmotifs include seven distinct themes for Juliet that outline various aspects of her developing personality and that incorporate slow tempi, strings and woodwinds. From the moment Prokofiev introduces her, Juliet is a girl brimming with youthful play but overshadowed by a foreboding doom. Prokofiev carefully creates atmosphere in his composition, from the lively, robust street scenes of Verona, to the lush, romantic love duets. The music for the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet is a madrigal, a love poem with a cantabile theme for violins and violas. Suddenly, Prokofiev has turned a young, playful girl into a woman in love. Later, in the balcony scene, their love is furthered in a lyrical adagio and bonded in a marriage scene that combines both the calm of their reason and their foreboding tragedy. It culminates in the bedroom scene, which also becomes their farewell.