WORLD PREMIERE: Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare

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All Performances for Romeo & Juliet are currently SOLD OUT. Please call the Box Office at (845) 758-7900 for more information.

Music by Sergey Prokofiev
Scenario by Sergey Prokofiev and Sergey Radlov

Mark Morris, choreographer
Performed by Mark Morris Dance Group
American Symphony Orchestra,
conducted by Leon Botstein, music director

Allen Moyer, scenic designer
Martin Pakledinaz, costume designer
James F. Ingalls, lighting designer

On January 11, 1940, the audience at Leningrad’s Kirov Theatre thrilled to the Russian premiere of Prokofiev’s glittering ballet Romeo & Juliet. However, we can assume that the least happy person in the house was the composer himself, who saw five years of labor come to fruition in a work that, while instantly popular, was not what he intended.

Now, after nearly 70 years, comes a historical double feat: the “newly original” Romeo & Juliet, and Mark Morris’s world-premiere dance for it. Working from Prokofiev’s original papers in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, musicologist Simon Morrison has meticulously reconstructed the score, which had been marred by years of bureaucratic interference.

SummerScape audiences will hear the restored score in all its glory and witness the world premiere of Mark Morris’s new dance, performed by his acclaimed company. Long celebrated for his sensitivity to musical structures as well as his playfulness, the choreographer will create a fresh world of motion for the story of star-crossed lovers divided by familial hatred.

SOSNOFF THEATER
July 4*, 5, 8, 9 at 8 pm
July 5+ at 2 pm, July 6 at 3 pm
Tickets: $25, 55, 75
Tuesday and Wednesday Performances: $20, 45, 65

+ Round-trip transportation by coach from Columbus Circle to the Fisher Center will be provided for this performance. For information, please call 845-758-7900. Reservations are required.

A Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College/Mark Morris Dance Group production in association with barbicanbite08, London; Cal Performances, Berkeley; Harris Theater for Music and Dance; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Virginia Arts Festival

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Sergey Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare, Opus 64, restored by Simon Morrison, is performed with permission of the Prokofiev Estate and G. Schirmer Inc. Source materials provided by the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.

Supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation.

 
Photo: Mozart Dances, Gene Schiavone / MMDG