Shakespeare and Prokokiev

Saw Romeo & Juliet last night. The ballet, not the play, as produced by the State Ballet Theatre of Russia.

Here's a version that I think looks better than what we saw, in case you want a general idea of the music. The choreography is quite a bit different, however:




That's Nureyev and Fonteyn doing the balcony scene.

Here's the big Knight's Dance scene from a Paris production:




In the program notes, they mentioned that Prokokiev had a lot of trouble with the fact that the dying don't dance. I suppose it's even worse than the opera problem that the dying don't sing.

Even in film today,
the dying often say
their last words with perfect clarity
which in real life is surely a rarity.