class="">Romeo and Juliet by Serghei Prokofiev, based on William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet

“In an improbable Verona, fictitious rather than futuristic, passably dilapidated, housing a favoured ruling class (Juliet’s family) and a miserable and exploited population (Romeo’s world), the meeting of two lovers is banned and outlawed; the omnipresent, muscled militia ordained by Juliet’s family to maintain social order is not only a Shakespearian image of fatality, it’s also the influence of power over one of the most essential individual freedoms: the freedom to love. Even if they comply at times, Romeo and Juliet each refute their imposed way of life in their respective social classes, which are closed to all communication as dictated by the militia of collective consciousness, hence the scandal of this love. Both want to be elsewhere, both aspire to what the other has. The passionate shock will permit them to move forward, to dare to escape the fate that was traced for them.” (Angelin Preljocaj)