Prokofiev: Masques from Romeo and Juliet

In late 1934, the Kirov Theater in Leningrad approached Sergei Prokofiev to collaborate on a ballet adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. When the Bolshoi Theater evenually took over the project, they deemed the score as “undanceable” and chose not to produce it. So Prokofiev repurposed excerpts from the ballet into a series of orchestral suites, making much of the music familiar to audiences before the ballet’s eventual stage performance.