Romeo & Juliet

Pietari Inkinen - conductor

Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Berlioz - Romeo and Juliet orchestral excerpts
Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet Suite

Experience PASSION with the NZSO.

Shakespeare’s powerful tale of a truly great love strikes a chord with everyone who knows the intensity of young passion. It has inspired artists of all kinds – serious and popular - from the 17th century up to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels. This program explores the responses of three great composers to the story’s intense emotions and tragic passion.

For the Romantic composers Tchaikovsky and Berlioz, Romeo and Juliet exerted an irresistible attraction as a source for their exploration of emotional intensity, driving their quest for new ways of achieving ever more powerful musical expressiveness through glorious melody. In the twentieth century, Prokofiev’s score to the Kirov ballet version of the story brings his insight into the sonic capabilities of a modern orchestra to bear upon some of his richest melodies and dramatic musical ideas. A tour de force for the orchestra, this concert is a display of some of the richest creativity in all classical music and a grand statement of music’s power to move us deeply.

‘And so, at the end of the third act, scarcely able to breath, stifled with a feeling as though an iron hand held my heart in its grip, I cried out, “Ah, I am lost!”’ -Berlioz on seeing Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.

Event listed by NZSO

View their other events or contact promoter