The mid-September general release of a recording of Sergei Prokofiev’s legendary ballet is already available to preview on the website of the Mariinsky label.
The Mariinsky label’s twenty-sixth disc is a video recording of Romeo and Juliet featuring Leonid Lavrovsky’s choreography in HD format for the first time. Lavrovsky’s version, premiered at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre in January 1940, was a de facto world premiere (the first performance of the piece in Brno in 1938 had been considered a failure). The main task the production team faced was to bring the work as close as possible to the Shakespearean play. Prokofiev’s score is generally recognised as a perfect musical epitome of Shakespeare’s tragedy. This is equally true of Lavrovsky’s version with regard to the dance embodiment of the drama in ballet theatre.
The recording of the ballet was made at the historic Mariinsky Theatre in February and March last year. The lead roles were performed by Diana Vishneva (Juliet), Vladimir Shklyarov (Romeo), Alexander Sergeyev (Mercutio) and Ilya Kuznetsov (Tybalt) with the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. It was this production that opened the Mariinsky Ballet’s recent three-week tour to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in London. British critics lavished praise on the performance, referring to Diana Vishneva and Vladimir Shklyarov’s appearances as “captivating” (The Telegraph).
The release forms part of a series of discs in DVD and Blu-ray formats.
| user_name | | Exit |
