Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

Romeo and Juliet
Commemorative coin depicting a scene from the ballet.
Choreographer	Ivo Váña-Psota
Music	Sergei Prokofiev
Based on	Romeo and Juliet
Premiere	1938 (1938) Mahen Theatre, Brno
Original ballet company	Ballet of the National Theatre, Brno
Characters	Ivo Váña-Psota as Romeo Zora Šemberová as Juliet
Genre	Drambalet

Romeo and Juliet (Russian: Ромео и Джульетта), Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev reused music from the ballet in three suites for orchestra and a solo piano work.

Based on a synopsis created by Adrian Piotrovsky (who first suggested the subject to Prokofiev) and Sergey Radlov, the ballet was composed by Prokofiev in September 1935 to their scenario which followed the precepts of "drambalet" (dramatised ballet, officially promoted at the Kirov Ballet to replace works based primarily on choreographic display and innovation). Following Radlov's acrimonious resignation from the Kirov in June 1934, a new agreement was signed with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on the understanding that Piotrovsky would remain involved. However, the ballet's original happy ending (contrary to Shakespeare) provoked controversy among Soviet cultural officials; the ballet's production was then postponed indefinitely when the staff of the Bolshoi was overhauled at the behest of the chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs, Platon Kerzhentsev. The ballet's failure to be produced within Soviet Russia until 1940 may also have been due to the increased fear and caution in the musical and theatrical community in the aftermath of the two notorious Pravda editorials criticising Shostakovich and other "degenerate modernists" including Piotrovsky. The conductor Yuri Fayer met with Prokofiev frequently during the writing of the music, and he strongly urged the composer to revert to the traditional ending. Fayer went on to conduct the first performance of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Suites of the ballet music were heard in Moscow and the United States, but the full ballet premiered in the Mahen Theatre, Brno (then in Czechoslovakia, now in the Czech Republic), on 30 December 1938. This version was a single-act production with music mainly from the first two suites. Prokofiev was not able to attend the premiere due to his status of outbound restriction.