In the initial drafts of his ballet scenario for "Romeo and Juliet," Sergei Prokofiev altered the ending of Shakespeare's tragedy, allowing the title characters to cheat their fate, and dance -- alive and happy. The composer is reputed to have remarked at the time, "Dead people can't dance."
But the Mariinsky (then Kirov) Theater wouldn't hear of such sacrilege being committed upon Shakespeare, and Prokofiev found himself sketching fresh music for the lonely deaths of the "star-crossed" lovers.
On March 18, "Romeo and Juliet" -- which became Prokofiev's most celebrated work for the stage -- will be performed at the Maly Theater of Opera and Ballet (Mussorgsky).
While posterity may commend the Mariinsky for preserving Shakespeare's integrity, this early episode of the composer's desires not quite panning out was not unique. In the end, the ballet was premiered not at the Mariinsky, but in Brno, Czechoslovakia. Difficulties such as these dogged the composer throughout his career, although they were not the result of any intractability on the composer's part.
Inspired by performances in Moscow of "Faust" and "Prince Igor," Sergei Prokofiev completed his first opera, "Velikan," within two months of his ninth birthday (even the precocious Mozart had waited until the more sober age of eleven). He continued to compose into the last years of his life, when he struggled to revise his opera based on the epic "War and Peace."
Prokofiev spent a substantial amount of his creative life at work on one opera or another. Yet of his eight mature operas, only one was actually staged during his lifetime -- "The Love for Three Oranges" -- and circumstances carried its premiere to the unexpected venue of the Chicago Opera.
Nor did Prokofiev fare appreciably better at the ballet. Stravinsky had experienced such phenomenal success writing for Diaghilev's ballet company in Paris that Prokofiev followed in his footsteps with high hopes. But success for Prokofiev in Paris was not guaranteed.
In the first place, Diaghilev wasn't interested in Prokofiev's idea for an opera based on Dostoyevsky's "The Gambler;" then he turned down "Ala and Lolli," a ballet on a "primitive Russian" subject (and uncomfortably imitative of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring").
At last they agreed on a scenario for "The Buffoon," but despite the ease with which Prokofiev provided a brilliant score, it was another six years before "The Buffoon" saw the stage.
Such instances of artistic frustration in the West encouraged Prokofiev to return to Russia. The composer wanted to mark his homecoming with a return to some of the conventions of classical Russian ballet.
In adapting "Romeo and Juliet" to a musical setting, Prokofiev chose ballet rather than opera, which is one of the piece's dramatic strengths.
Shakespeare's drama is so rich, and the musicality of his poetry so self-sufficient, that operatic treatment of his plays tends inevitably to lead to a "non-Shakespearean" impression. Through ballet, however, a story can be developed musically, without words and music interfering with one another.
The familiarity of the source material works in Prokofiev's favor. The characters are personalities rather than symbols: not only the main characters, but Mercutio and Tybalt as well, are depicted with particular success.
In the score for "Romeo and Juliet," Prokofiev's powers of musical dramatization achieve a depth unequalled in his other stage works.
In the production of the ballet at the Mussorgsky Theater, some elements of the staging sharply underscore the action.
At the start, the Prince of Verona breaks up a scuffle between members of the feuding families. The swords are taken from the combatants and placed on a frame lowered from above stage, where they hover over the subsequent scenes.
Prokofiev's music is filled with lyrical tenderness, temporarily dispelling the sense of tragedy, but the hanging swords are a potent reminder of violence, and prove all too convenient when Tybalt and Mercutio quarrel later.
There is music both to lament the outcome of the tragedy, and to illustrate its pitiless causes. For the latter, Prokofiev did not limit himself to the musical dramatization of the sword-fights, though he does this effectively.
One of the best-known numbers from the ballet is the "Knights' Dance," from the ball scene. The story takes place in Renaissance Italy, where a cultivated man's education necessarily included the gentler arts, and every well-bred person could sing in an amateur madrigal group and write light verse.
All the same, the young men of the houses of Capulet and Montague probably favored swordplay over other refinements. Prokofiev did not write the "Knights' Dance" to be lyrical or harmonically engaging; the music is ungainly, blunt, stubborn, and forceful. The point seems to be that the knights can dance, but with neither grace nor charm.
But of course, after the entertainment of the ball, they will eventually get on with man's business, and fight to the end -- when the dead can't dance.