Copyright by
Deborah Annette Wilson
2003
ABSTRACT
Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet is best known in the version first
presented at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad, on January 11, 1940, with choreography by
Leonid Lavrovsky. Frequently overlooked is an earlier score, commissioned by the
Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and completed in 1935, which differs significantly from the
commonly known 1940 variant. To this day, the 1935 version of Romeo and Juliet,
which contains a happy ending where Romeo and Juliet both live, has never been
performed. This dissertation explores the history of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and
the complicated process that resulted in the world-wide acceptance of Lavrovsky’s 1940
staging as the legitimate version of the ballet, despite Prokofiev’s protests.
This dissertation debunks the general view that Prokofiev did not face censure or
direct criticism in 1936, after the publication of two editorials in Pravda criticizing the
music of Shostakovich and other Soviet composers. This study presents evidence that
indicates this is untrue, that a planned 1936 production of Romeo and Juliet at the
Bolshoi Theater in Moscow was cancelled out of fear and caution in the aftermath of the
two Pravda editorials.
Romeo and Juliet is viewed in this dissertation as an on-going project rather than
as a fixed and final product, as it is usually regarded. The project is considered in the
larger context of the social, political and artistic environments of the time. The
ii
manuscript scores I worked with are compared to known printed scores, and the
discrepancies are discussed and analyzed. The dissertation also brings to light a number
of pre-compositional documents that were previously unknown.
Two opposite interpretations of Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union in the
1930s have resulted in disparate political agendas viewing it as a turning point in
Prokofiev’s career. Western musicologists traditionally have viewed it as a mistake,
while Soviet scholars have seen it as the beginning of his richest creative period. This
dissertation, using Romeo and Juliet as a case study, challenges the notion of a significant
shift in Prokofiev’s compositional style, showing instead the remarkable continuity of the
compositions written before and after his return.
iii
To Dave and Charlotte Wilson
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Margarita Mazo, for her
invaluable support and guidance. I am grateful to the members of my committee, Lois
Rosow and Donald Harris, and to Graeme Boone, Charles Atkinson, Irene Masing-Delic,
and Vlady Steffel for their time and expertise. I would also like to thank the entire
Musicology Department for providing me with a supportive environment throughout this
process.
My archival research in Russia, London, and Paris was made possible through
fellowships and grants from the Ohio State University’s Graduate School, the School of
Music, and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies. I am grateful for their
generosity.
I would like to thank Irina Medvedeva, Deputy Director of the Glinka Museum,
Noëlle Mann, the archivist of The Serge Prokofiev Archive, and the archivists, librarians
and staff at the various other archives and libraries I worked in for their support and
patience.
Special thanks goes to the Russian Research Institute for the Preservation of
Cultural and Natural Heritage, especially Yuri Vedenin, Pavel Shulgin, Evgeniia
v
Andreyeva, Alexander Yeremeyev, and Sergei Pchyolkin. They provided me with
invaluable assistance on so many levels; this project would not have been possible
without their help.
I would also like to acknowledge my teachers and mentors over the years,
especially Jeanne Gray, Sarah Johnson, Howard Weiss, and Sandy Wilson, who helped
instill me with a love of music and learning.
Finally, I want to thank my family and friends for their unwavering support and
encouragement.
vi
VITA
November 17, 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Born in Rochester, New York
1987 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.M., Music Education, Crane School of Music
Potsdam College, SUNY at Potsdam
1992 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M.A., Musicology, Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester
1992-1999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Graduate Student and Teaching Assistant
The Ohio State University
1999-2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lecturer
The Ohio State University, Marion Campus
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Music
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Vita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
List of Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Note on Transliteration and Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
Chapters:
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Methodology and Overview of Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Sergei Prokofiev: Two Historiographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Prokofiev’s Return to the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Romeo and Juliet and Its Place in Prokofiev’s Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2. Setting the Stage: Theater and Dance in Russia in the Early Twentieth Century . . . 39
Vsevolod Meyerhold and Early Twentieth-Century Experimental Theater . . . . 39
Sergei Radlov and His Approach to Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Radlov’s 1935 Drama Production of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Russian Imperial Grand Ballet and Marius Petipa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
3. The Collaborative Process and the Creation of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
The Romeo and Juliet Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
The January 1935 Outline of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
The May 1935 Compositional Plan of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Composition of the 1935 Piano Score of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
viii
4. The Compositional Process: Blocks of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Prokofiev’s Early Ballets and Pre-Compositional Timings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
Pre-Compositional Timings in Romeo and Juliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Prokofiev and Film Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Blocks of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5. “All Kinds of Missteps”: Cancellation of the Bolshoi Theater Production
of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
The Undanceable Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
The Happy Ending Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Return to the Tragic Ending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Cancellation of the Bolshoi Theater Production of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . 148
Censorship and Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150
6. “Never Was a Tale of Greater Woe Than Prokofiev’s Music For Romeo”:
The Orchestral Suites, The Brno Premiere, and The 1940 Kirov Theater
Production of Romeo And Juliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
The Two Orchestral Suites From Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156
The 1938 Brno State Theater Premiere of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
The Creation of Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
The 1940 Kirov Theater Production of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172
Critical Reception of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
I. Archival Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
II. Books, Articles, Dissertations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
Page
0.1
Chronology of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.1
Act I from a 1935 outline of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
in Prokofiev’s hand. In the upper right hand corner, Prokofiev
dated the document Jan. 1935, and labeled it as the plot of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (in abbreviated Russian:
“Soderzhan Rom i Dzh Shekspira”). SPA, Notebook 27
(January-June 1935) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
3.2
Translation of Prokofiev’s Jan 1935 scenario outline. SPA,
Notebook 27 (January-June 1935). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.3
Act IV (the ‘Happy Ending’) of Romeo and Juliet from the May
1935 Compositional Plan (in Prokofiev’s shorthand Russian).
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 66, l. 2 r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.4
Text of the May 1935 Compositional Plan for Romeo
and Juliet (incorporating changes made by Prokofiev during
composition of the music). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.1
Translation of pre-compositional plan for Trapeze (June 1924). . . . . . . 107
4.2
Translation of pre-compositional plan for The Steel Step, prologue
and act I (August 11, 1925). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.3
Translation of pre-compositional plan for On the Dnepr
(January 1931). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.4
Comparison of timings by number of the May 1935 pre-compositional
plan and the September 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet. Bold
indicates a discrepancy of more than thirty seconds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4.5
Blocks of Time analysis of Act I, scene 2, the Balcony Scene. . . . . . . . 129
x
5.1:
Facsimile of orchestration notebook for Romeo and Juliet. The
numbers 105 and 106 refer to the piano score manuscript. RGALI,
fond 1929, op. 1, no. 61, l. 11 r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
6.1
Coordination of orchestral suites with the 1935 score (by number). . . . 157
6.2
Chronological arrangement of the fourteen numbers comprising
Romeo and Juliet suites one and two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.3
Program from the December 1938 production of Romeo and Juliet
at the Brno State Theater. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.4
Translation of the program of the 1938 Brno production of Romeo
and Juliet (translation by Jeff Holdeman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.5
Comparison the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet to the 1940
Kirov Theater production of the ballet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.6
Blocks of Time comparison of Act I, scene 2, the Balcony Scene of
Romeo and Juliet in the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet and
in the 1940 Kirov Theater production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
6.7
Text of libretto for Romeo and Juliet incorporating Lavrovsky’s
changes. Compiled from typed document with changes and additions
for Lavrovsky’s production marked in Prokofiev’s handwriting and
compared with published libretto. RGALI, fond 1929, op. 1, no. 66,
l. 7-10. Additions to the earlier version are bolded. Omissions are
noted with [ ]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6.8
Sections from the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet not included
in the published version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
xi
LIST OF EXAMPLES
Example
Page
4.1
“Romeo,” Block A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.2
“Romeo,” Block B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.3
“Romeo,” Block C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
4.4
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130
4.5
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.6
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.7
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132
4.8
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.9
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.10
1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
xii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BN
Bibliothèque Nationale de France (National Library of France), Paris.
BMO
Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra, (Opera Library and Museum), Paris.
GABT
Gosudarstvennyi Academicheskii Bol’shoi Teatr (State Academic
Bolshoi Theater), Moscow. Also referred to as the Bolshoi Theater.
GATOB
Gosudarstvennyi Academicheskii Teatr Opery i Baleta (State
Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet), St. Petersburg. Also the
Mariinsky Theater (pre-Revolutionary and present-day) and the Kirov
Theater (1935-1991).
GTsMMK
Gosudarstvennyi Tsentral’nyi Muzei Muzykal’noi Kul’tury imeni M.
I. Glinki (M. I. Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture),
Moscow. Also referred to as the Glinka Museum.
MKhT
Moskovskii Khudozhestvennyi Teatr (Moscow Art Theater), Moscow.
RNB
Rossiiskaia Natsional’naia Biblioteka (Russian National Library), St.
Petersburg. Known also as the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public
Library.
RGALI
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (Russian
State Archive of Literature and the Arts), Moscow.
SPA
The Serge Prokofiev Archive, London.
TsGALI
Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (Central
State Archive for Literature and the Arts), St. Petersburg.
xiii
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION
Several systems of transliterating the Russian Cyrillic alphabet into Roman letters
have been developed, each with its own strengths and shortcomings. I have chosen to
employ the United States Library of Congress system, except when popularly accepted
alternative spellings exist. Therefore, I refer to Prokofiev, Tcherepnin and Lavrovsky,
rather than Prokof'ev, Cherepnin and Lavrovskii, and Moscow, rather than Moskva.
There are numerous name changes that have taken place in Russia and the former
Sviet Union in the last century. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the city of
Saint Petersburg. Founded and named Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great in 1703, the
city’s name was changed to the more Russian-sounding Petrograd in 1914. After Lenin's
death in 1924, it was changed to Leningrad. In a city-wide referendum in 1991, the
original name of Saint Petersburg was restored. In this dissertation I will refer to all
places and people by the names used at the time, with explanatory notes to avoid
confusion.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Russian are my own.
xiv
INTRODUCTION
“Never was a tale of greater woe
than Prokofiev’s music for Romeo.”
- Galina Ulanova, 1940
Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, one of the most often performed twentiethcentury ballets, has become a favorite of audiences around the world, despite its origins
as a Soviet ballet written during the height of Stalin’s first wave of repression against
artists, writers, and composers in the mid-1930s. Its success, however, was neither
immediate nor easy. As implied by the remark quoted above, made by Galina Ulanova,
the ballerina who danced the role of Juliet at the ballet’s Soviet premiere, Prokofiev’s
music for Romeo and Juliet was at first viewed as difficult and undanceable. Ulanova
later came to regard Romeo and Juliet as her favorite ballet, but her initial reaction can be
seen as a metaphor for the long, complex, and often tragic history of the ballet as a whole.
Romeo and Juliet is best known in the version first presented at the Kirov Theater
in Leningrad, on January 11, 1940, with choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky. Frequently
overlooked is an earlier score, commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and
completed in 1935, which differs significantly from the commonly-known 1940 variant
(see Figure 0.1: Chronology of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet). To this day, the 1935
version of Romeo and Juliet, which contains a happy ending where Romeo and Juliet
1
both live, has never been performed. Prokofiev scholars have long been aware of the
1935 version, but until recently little attention has been given to it. Such lack of
consideration ignores that as late as 1947, Prokofiev considered the 1935 score, not the
1940 staging, to be the authoritative version.1 This dissertation focuses on the creation of
the 1935 score of Romeo and Juliet, and the complicated process that resulted in the
general acceptance of Lavrovsky’s 1940 staging of the ballet as the legitimate version,
despite Prokofiev’s protests.
In January 1936, the 1935 version of Romeo and Juliet was in rehearsal, and plans
for a spring 1936 premiere at the Bolshoi Theater were well under way, as reported in a
short press release in the January 29 issue of Sovetskoe Iskusstvo.2 This is the last
mention in any known source of the intended 1936 Bolshoi Theater production. Even the
fact that the production had been canceled was never publicized.
In his 1941 autobiography, published in the Soviet Union and possibly written in
response to ideological pressures, Prokofiev gave two reasons for the cancellation of the
Bolshoi production. The ballet was not performed, Prokofiev wrote, because the Bolshoi
Theater considered the music to be undanceable, and because there was widespread
1
Prokofiev wrote two letters to Upravlenie po okhrane avtorskikh prav [Administration for the protection
of author’s rights], on March 25, 1940, and February 12, 1947 (RGALI, fond 1929, op. 2, no. 349) and two
letters to Glavrepertkom [Central Repertory Committee], dated April 26, 1940, and October 2, 1940
(RGALI, fond 1929, op. 2, no. 350). The issue at hand was a dispute over the composer’s honorarium for
various performances of Romeo and Juliet, but Prokofiev also repeatedly stressed that he and Sergei
Radlov had given permission to alter the ballet for the 1940 production only. Prokofiev therefore wanted
the work to be considered, for purposes of payment, a 4-act ballet as he wrote it, rather than a 3-act ballet as
Lavrovsky had staged it.
2
Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, 29 January 1936, 4
2
outrage in the Soviet press about giving Shakespeare’s tragedy a happy ending. Further
examination of archival material, newspaper and journal articles, and Prokofiev’s
personal correspondence, however, shows neither explanation to be accurate.
In order to understand Prokofiev’s misleading account of events, the framework
of the artistic and political atmosphere in the Soviet Union in the 1930s must be explored.
Although Prokofiev’s music came under heavy criticism from the Stalin government and
artistic-control agencies in 1948, it has been widely accepted that he did not face personal
censure or direct criticism before that time. This dissertation shows that this is simply
untrue, that the cancellation of the Bolshoi production of Romeo and Juliet was in fact
directly related to the aftermath of the infamous 1936 Pravda articles criticizing
Shostakovich’s music.
The commission from the Bolshoi Theater to write Romeo and Juliet seems to
have been a decisive factor for Prokofiev in making his controversial move back to the
Soviet Union in the 1930s. Romeo and Juliet was composed during the period when
Prokofiev was spending nearly all of his time in the USSR, but had still not committed to
re-locating his family and giving up his apartment in Paris. Nearly all of his commissions
by this time were from Soviet sources. Prokofiev used the commission for Romeo and
Juliet as leverage for securing an apartment in Moscow, as well as to obtain travel
documents for himself and his family. By the time the Bolshoi Theater production of the
ballet was canceled, Prokofiev and his family were settled in Moscow as permanent
residents. When Prokofiev’s situation at the time is viewed in this context, it is more
3
understandable why a performance of Romeo and Juliet became so important to him. It
was the work that returned him to his homeland, and therefore, seeing it staged, even in
an altered version, became a priority.
Prokofiev was a prolific composer, producing significant works in nearly every
genre, including symphonies, sonatas, film scores, operas, concertos, chamber music, and
ballets. He worked and corresponded with many of the great figures of the early
twentieth century, such as Sergei Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold,
Sergei Eisenstein, Konstantin Balmont, Sergei Koussevitsky, Dmitri Shostakovich,
Mstislav Rostropovich, and many others.
Prokofiev composed some of the best-known and well-loved music of his era,
including the ‘Classical’ Symphony, The Love For Three Oranges, Romeo and Juliet,
Peter and the Wolf, War and Peace, piano, violin and cello concerti, and numerous
pieces for solo piano. Yet he remains one of the least understood and least studied
twentieth-century composers. The reasons for this relative lack of attention are myriad,
but center around his peripatetic lifestyle, his frequent temper tantrums and infamous lack
of social graces, and most of all, his return to Soviet Russia after spending nearly twenty
years living in America and Europe. The most prominent Soviet composers, most
notably Dmitri Shostakovich, lived for a number of years after Stalin’s death and
therefore had the opportunity to “redeem” themselves artistically for the politicallyoriented music they felt compelled to write under Stalin’s regime. Prokofiev was not
granted this luxury; he died on the same day as Stalin, March 5, 1953. This, perhaps, is
another reason Prokofiev receives less attention than some of his colleagues.
4
Methodology and Overview of Chapters
This study of Romeo and Juliet is unique in that I view the ballet as an on-going
project that took a number of different forms rather than as a fixed and final product, as it
is usually regarded. The materials I worked with are considered in the larger context of
the social, political and artistic environments of the time. The various scores I worked
with are compared to known scores, and the discrepancies are discussed and analyzed. I
also work with and discuss the importance of a number of pre-compositional documents
that were previously unknown.
Much of the information in this dissertation was gathered from archival material
located in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, and Paris. In Moscow I worked primarily at
two archives, the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture (GTsMMK) and the
Russian State Archive of Literature and the Arts (RGALI). At GtsMMK I worked with
the Prokofiev archive, which includes a handful of pages from Prokofiev’s 1935
manuscript of the piano score of Romeo and Juliet, many letters, primarily from before
1932, as well as printer’s proofs for the 1946 publication of the piano score of Romeo and
Juliet. RGALI holds the majority of known Prokofiev materials, although a number of
letters and documents were closed and not available to scholars until March 2003, fifty
years after the composer’s death. At RGALI I worked with a number of Prokofiev
scores, including the remaining pages of the 1935 piano score manuscript of Romeo and
Juliet, correspondence, and other material, including sketchbooks and compositional
plans. Also at RGALI, I examined material in the archives of the State Academic
Bolshoi Theater (GABT) and the papers of Pavel Lamm, Prokofiev’s copyist for Romeo
and Juliet.
5
In St. Petersburg I worked with the archives of Sergei Radlov and Vera Alpers in
the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Russian National Library (RNB).
I also looked at the archives for the State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet
(GATOB), which are located in the Central State Archive for Literature and the Arts
(TsGALI).
At the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), I worked with the large
collection of letters from Prokofiev to Souvchinsky. While in Paris I also examined a
number of letters from Prokofiev to Sergei Diaghilev, located in the Bibliothèque-Musée
de l’Opera (BMO).
The Serge Prokofiev Archive (SPA), housed at Goldsmiths College in London,
holds a vast collection of letters and documents from the years Prokofiev lived in the
West. I was able to locate and work with a number of previously unknown sketches and
documents about Prokofiev’s ballets written before Romeo and Juliet, as well as with
previously unknown material pertaining to the creation of Romeo and Juliet.
The dissertation is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 discusses Western and
Soviet views of Prokofiev’s life and works, and the two separate historiographies that
have developed from these divergent views. The issue of Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet
Union and its myriad effects are also discussed.
Chapter 2 provides background material about theater and ballet in early
twentieth-century Russia, and the trends that influenced Prokofiev and his collaborators
in the creation of Romeo and Juliet. Much of the chapter focuses on the career of the
theater director Sergei Radlov, Prokofiev’s primary collaborator for Romeo and Juliet.
6
In Chapter 3, the attention shifts to the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet,
sketched out in the spring of 1935 and composed that summer at the Bolshoi Theater
retreat at Polenovo. The process used by Prokofiev and Radlov to turn Shakespeare’s
drama into a viable ballet is recreated, including their decision to give the tragedy a
happy ending.
Chapter 4 examines Prokofiev’s compositional process, and “blocks of time” as a
compositional method is introduced. Musical and dramatic analyses of the 1935 score
with blocks of time structure as its foundation conclude the chapter.
Chapter 5 centers around the Bolshoi Theater production of Romeo and Juliet
planned for spring 1936, but mysteriously canceled. The discrepancies between
Prokofiev’s own account of the cancellation and what accounts in the press and in
personal letters seem to reveal is discussed, as well as possible reasons for Prokofiev’s
later reinterpretation of these events.
Chapter 6 addresses the transformation from the 1935 piano score of Romeo and
Juliet into the version of Romeo and Juliet known and performed today. Within months
of the cancellation of the Bolshoi Theater production of Romeo and Juliet planned for
spring 1936, Prokofiev prepared two concert suites from the ballet. The suites were
performed all over the Soviet Union as well as abroad, fulfilling Prokofiev’s hope that
familiarity with the music would facilitate a staging of the ballet. In January 1938,
Prokofiev signed a contract with the Brno State Theater in Brno, Czechoslovakia for a
production of Romeo and Juliet later that year. Prokofiev’s score was radically altered by
the ballet master in Brno, resulting in a highly abridged one-act version of Prokofiev’s
four-act ballet.
7
In Spring 1938, negotiations with the Kirov Theater for the Soviet premiere of
Romeo and Juliet began. Leonid Lavrovsky was appointed as choreographer for the
production. The second part of Chapter 6 examines the uneasy collaboration between
Lavrovsky and Prokofiev during the rehearsal process. Prokofiev fought to get the ballet
staged as he and Radlov wrote it back in 1935, but Lavrovsky had other plans.
Lavrovsky attempted to shape Romeo and Juliet into a form more representative of the
tradition in which he was trained. Prokofiev and Lavrovsky each stubbornly resisted the
ideas of the other, while both attempted to maintain an outward facade of cooperation and
harmony. In the end, Prokofiev conceded to most of Lavrovsky’s demands, resulting in a
large number of changes fundamentally altering the dramaturgy of the ballet.
Throughout this dissertation, I maintain the idea of Romeo and Juliet as a
continous process rather than as a stylistic turning point in Prokofiev’s ballets. Romeo
and Juliet, of course, is a unique composition with its own specific set of challenges in its
compositional and performance history. An examination of how Prokofiev approached
and solved these challenges for Romeo and Juliet, however, reveals remarkable parallels
with how Prokofiev approached and solved challenges encountered in the composition of
his other ballets. These parallels allow me to bridge the perceived gap in compositional
style and negotiate a continuity in Prokofiev’s approach to ballet as a theatrical genre.
Therefore a thorough study of the creation and performance history of Romeo and Juliet
produces a model that promotes a greater understanding of Prokofiev’s general approach
to ballet based on aspects of unity rather than difference.
8
Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet: Chronology
December 1934
Prokofiev sees Sergei Radlov’s dramatic production of
Romeo and Juliet in Moscow.
January 1935
Prokofiev returns to Paris and writes out scene-by-scene
synopsis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
April 1935
Prokofiev meets with Radlov and Adrian Piotrovsky in
Leningrad; they begin sketching out plans for a ballet based
on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with a happy ending
where Romeo and Juliet both live. The collaborators
anticipate a production at GATOB in Leningrad.
May 16, 1935
Prokofiev begins May 1935 compositional plan for Romeo
and Juliet.
Spring 1935
Plans for a production at GATOB fall through; plans begin
for a 1936 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow.
June – October 1935
Prokofiev composes piano score of Romeo and Juliet at
Polenovo, the summer retreat of the Bolshoi Theater.
September 1, 1935
Hearing of the first three acts of Romeo and Juliet at the
Bolshoi Theater.
September 8, 1935
Prokofiev finishes the piano score of Romeo and Juliet and
immediately begins orchestrating the ballet.
October 4, 1935
Official hearing of Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi
Theater.
December 6, 1935
Postcard from Prokofiev to Radlov asking if Radlov has
reconsidered the happy ending.
January 25, 1935
Hearing of the first three acts of Romeo and Juliet
sponsored by Sovetskoe Iskusstvo.
Figure 0.1: Chronology of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet
9
Figure 0.1 (continued)
January 28, 1936
“Muddle Instead of Music,” unsigned editorial in Pravda
criticizing Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the
Mtsensk District.
January 29, 1936
Short press release about Romeo and Juliet in Sovetskoe
Iskusstvo. This is the last known reference to the planned
1936 Bolshoi Theater production of the ballet.
February 6, 1936
“Ballet Falseness,” unsigned editorial in Pravda criticizing
Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream.
April 16, 1936
Letter from Prokofiev to Vera Alpers about “all kinds of
missteps” at the Bolshoi Theater, the only known reference
to the cancellation of the planned 1936 Bolshoi Theater
production of Romeo and Juliet.
Summer 1936
Prokofiev compiles the first two orchestral suites from
Romeo and Juliet. Most likely Prokofiev removed the
happy ending during this period.
November 24, 1936
Premiere of the first orchestral suite from Romeo and
Juliet.
April 15, 1937
Premiere of the second orchestral suite from Romeo and
Juliet.
January 19, 1938
Contract to produce Romeo and Juliet at the Brno State
Theater in Czechoslovakia signed.
August 1938
Prokofiev and Leonid Lavrovsky consult about a
production of Romeo and Juliet at the Kirov Theater in
Leningrad.
December 30, 1938
Premiere of Romeo and Juliet at the Brno State Theater in
Czechoslovakia.
10
Figure 0.1 (continued)
Autumn 1939
Romeo and Juliet in rehearsal at the Kirov Theater in
Leningrad. The dancers threaten to strike in December
because they find Prokofiev’s music undanceable.
January 11, 1940
Soviet premiere of Romeo and Juliet at the Kirov Theater
in Leningrad.
March 25, 1940
Letter from Prokofiev to Upravlenie po okhrane avtorskikh
prav [Administration for the protection of author’s rights].
Prokofiev and Radlov had authorized Lavrovsky’s changes
to Romeo and Juliet for the 1940 Kirov Theater production
only.
April 26, 1940
Letter from Prokofiev to Glavrepertkom [Central Repertory
Committee]. Prokofiev and Radlov had authorized
Lavrovsky’s changes to Romeo and Juliet for the 1940
Kirov Theater production only.
October 2, 1940
Letter from Prokofiev to Glavrepertkom [Central Repertory
Committee]. Prokofiev and Radlov had authorized
Lavrovsky’s changes to Romeo and Juliet for the 1940
Kirov Theater production only.
December 1946
Production of Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi Theater in
Moscow, with choreography by Lavrovsky. This
production is nearly identical to the 1940 Kirov Theater
production.
February 12, 1947
Letter from Prokofiev to Upravlenie po okhrane avtorskikh
prav [Administration for the protection of author’s rights].
Prokofiev and Radlov had authorized Lavrovsky’s changes
to Romeo and Juliet for the 1940 Kirov Theater production
only.
11
CHAPTER 1
SERGEI PROKOFIEV: TWO HISTORIOGRAPHIES
Prokofiev scholarship has traditionally focused on his decision to leave the infant
Soviet Union in favor of life in the West, the reversal of that decision and his return to
Russia in the mid 1930's, and the effects of these moves on both his personal and his
professional life. Although the central events of Prokofiev’s life are now well established,
the interpretation of these events and how they affected his creative output remain
contentious. It is important to understand the issues that have influenced Prokofiev
studies in general before moving to a detailed discussion of one work, in this case Romeo
and Juliet.
Politics and ideology have played and continue to play a leading role in Prokofiev
research, often at the expense of the music itself. One result of Prokofiev’s return to the
Soviet Union is the development of two separate historiographies of the composer, one
Western and one Soviet. In the typical Western view, Prokofiev’s most fruitful years
were those he spent in the West, and his return to the Soviet Union was predominantly
detrimental to his life and his career. From the Soviet point of view, Prokofiev’s years in
the West were unsuccessful, and he found himself personally and professionally only
after he returned to his homeland. These two historiographies are generally treated as
12
mutually exclusive, and can be identified in nearly every study of Prokofiev and his
music. As can be seen in the discussion below, even authors who claim to avoid ideology
can easily be identified as stemming from one of these two historiographies by the
particular stance of the narrative.
The following paragraphs attempt to outline the known facts of Prokofiev’s life
while avoiding subjective interpolations as much as possible. Biographical descriptions
of Prokofiev’s childhood and adolescence are almost all drawn from Prokofiev’s own
reminiscences, taken from the detailed diaries he kept his entire life.3 These
reminiscences have been published in two versions. The so-called “long” autobiography,
first published in 1952, covered only Prokofiev’s childhood and early years at the St.
Petersburg Conservatory, ending in 1909. 4 The more condensed “short” autobiography
was published in 1941. The narrative is less detailed, but covers both Prokofiev’s
childhood
3
Until recently, the 1927 Soviet diary, which covered the three-month concert tour in early 1927 of
Prokofiev’s first visit to the Soviet Union after leaving in 1918, was the only volume of Prokofiev’s diaries
available. It was published as part of larger collections in 1991, in both Russian and English versions. M.
E. Tarakanov, ed., Sergei Prokof’ev, 1891-1991: Dnevnik, Pis’ma, Becedy, Vospominaniia [Sergei
Prokofiev, 1891-1991: Diary, Letters, Conversations, Remembrances] (Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor,
1991). Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet Diary and Other Writings, trans. Oleg Prokofiev, ed. Oleg Prokofiev and
Christopher Palmer (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1991). Prokofiev’s diaries through 1933 were published in
late 2002 by Prokofiev’s elder son, Sviataslav Sergeevich. Unfortunately, until March 2003, Prokofiev’s
post-1933 diaries were held in closed archives, unavailable to scholars.
4
Sergei Prokofiev, Avtobiografiia, 2d. ed., ed. M. G. Kozlova (Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1982).
The English edition of the long autobiography is Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer’s Memoir, ed. David
H. Appel, trans. Guy Daniels (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979).
13
and his adult life, through 1940.5 Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev, the only surviving child
of Maria Grigorevna and Sergei Alekseevich Prokofiev, was born on April 11 (April 23,
New Style) 1891, on the Ukrainian estate of Sontsovka, managed by his father. His
mother was an amateur pianist and soon recognized the blossoming musical talent in her
son. For two summers, the composer Reinhold Glière traveled to Sontsovka to teach the
young Prokofiev. In 1904, Prokofiev and his mother moved to Saint Petersburg so Sergei
could attend the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. His relationship with his professors there
was often antagonistic. Prokofiev resented the “extremely dull and uninteresting”
exercises, while his teachers, including Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, became frustrated with their talented, but headstrong and
inflexible pupil.6 His early years of study were interrupted by the events of the 1905
revolution, but in 1909, at the unusually early age of 18, Prokofiev completed the course
in composition, earning the official designation of free artist. Instead of continuing on in
the free composition class, Prokofiev enrolled in the piano class of Anna Esipova and
studied conducting with Nikolai Tcherepnin. Prokofiev left the Saint Petersburg
Conservatory in 1914, at age 23, after winning the Anton Rubenstein Prize in piano with
a performance of his own Piano Concerto No. 1.
5
S. I. Shliftshtein, ed, S. S. Prokof’ev: Materialy, Dokumenty, Vospominaniia, [S. S. Prokofiev: Materials,
Documents, Remembrances], 2d ed. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Muzykal’noe Izdatel’stvo, 1961). There
are two versions of the short autobiography in English: Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles,
Reminiscences, trans. Rose Prokofieva (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.) and Sergei
Prokofiev, Soviet Diary and Other Writings, trans. Oleg Prokofiev, ed. Oleg Prokofiev and Christopher
Palmer (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1991). It is the short autobiography that contains Prokofiev’s comments
about Romeo and Juliet, and therefore the version most frequently cited in this dissertation.
6
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 17.
14
In the aftermath of the two 1917 revolutions, the first of which removed the Tsar,
the second of which brought Lenin and his Bolsheviks to power, Prokofiev left Russia in
May 1918, presumably for just a few months while the political and economic situation
settled down. He spent the next fifteen years abroad, based first in New York City, then
later in Paris. In the United States, Prokofiev developed a name as a brilliant pianist, but
recognition as a composer was harder to achieve. Performances and commissions
seemed easier to obtain in Europe, where many of his fellow émigrés now lived. Success
in Europe was not immediate but, with the help of Sergei Koussevitzky, Sergei
Diaghilev, and others, he was able to rely more on his compositions and less on
performance to make a living.
In 1923 he married the singer Carolina Codina, who had taken the stage name of
Lina Llubera. They met in New York in 1918, and their involvement intensified when
Lina moved to Europe to continue her vocal studies. They had two children together,
Sviatislav, born in 1924, and Oleg, born in 1928.
At the end of the 1920s, Prokofiev began to reestablish his ties with the Soviet
Union. In January of 1927 he returned to Russia for the first time since his departure in
1918. The three-month tour was a success on all levels, and Prokofiev began to consider
the controversial notion of returning on a more permanent basis. By 1932 nearly all of
his commissions were Soviet and he was spending a large portion of every year in the
USSR. In May 1936, in the midst of the increasingly conservative atmosphere in the
Soviet Union, caused by backlash of criticism leveled at Shostakovich earlier in the year,
Prokofiev finalized the startling decision to give up his Parisian apartment and make the
Soviet Union his permanent home.
15
The remaining seventeen years of Prokofiev’s life encompassed the hardships of
World War II and the 1948 ideological attack on music, led by Andrei Zhdanov. In 1941
Prokofiev left Lina and the boys and later married Mira Mendelson, co-librettist for many
of his compositions written after 1939. After the 1948 Zhdanov attack, Prokofiev found
it nearly impossible to obtain performances and commissions. As a result, the last four
years of his life were spent in extreme poverty.7 Despite personal and professional
difficulties, Prokofiev continued to compose prolifically, working up until just hours
before his death. Perhaps the greatest of the many ironies in his life was that Prokofiev
died on March 5, 1953, the same day as Stalin, the man responsible for the repression that
dominated the last two decades of Prokofiev's life.
Within the confines of the two historiographies mentioned earlier in the Chapter,
however, different emphases are found in various volumes. This can be observed within
the three biographies of Prokofiev written by the Soviet musicologist Israel Nestev. The
first of these was published in 1946, in English translation only.8 Like most Soviet
biographers, Nestev concentrated on the years before 1918 and the years after
Prokofiev’s return to the USSR, skimming only briefly over the years spent outside of
Russia. Nestev’s descriptions, however, were more balanced than those of later accounts,
including his own. This was possible because the book was published in the West only.
7
Mstislav Rostropovich, who spent the summers from 1947 to 1951 with Prokofiev at his summer home
outside of Moscow, tells how he repeatedly appealed to the Composer’s Union on Prokofiev’s behalf, for
enough of a stipend to at least buy food [Mstislav Rostropovich, taped interview with author, September
17, 1999].
8
I. V. Nest’ev, Sergei Prokofiev: His Musical Life, intro. Sergei Eisenstien, trans. Rose Prokofieva (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946). This version has never been published in Russian.
16
This relative balance can be seen in Nestev’s discussions about pieces from Prokofiev’s
Western period. About the ballet Chout (The Buffoon), for example, written in 1915 for
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Nestev noted:
The careful emphasis laid on the crude and cynical scenes, the accentuated mechanical
rhythms, and the predominance of sharply exaggerated, mercilessly caricatured masks
would have had the most depressing effect on the modern Soviet audience.9
This seems to be more observation than criticism. Other details elicited a more
positive response from Nestev:
Nevertheless, the composer’s amazing gift for musical narrative, his ability to give the
most accurate and laconic expression to his ideas, reached a high-water mark in The
Buffoon. The orchestration, spare, stinging, sharply graphic, with abundant use of the
piano and percussion instruments … with subtle and ingenious employment of diverse
string effects, is extremely striking.10
Nestev’s second biography was published in Russian in 1957, with an English
translation following in 1960.11 The 1957 work was more than twice the length of the
1946 biography. Accordingly, Nestev was able to discuss many individual works in
more detail. Perhaps because it was published in the Soviet Union and subjected to the
censorship process, the ideological slant is much more visible. The section on
Prokofiev’s years in the West is still more abbreviated than the other sections. More
tellingly, compositions that had received measured admiration in 1946 now bore a
scathing review. In 1946, The Buffoon merely would not be appropriate for Soviet
audiences, though much in the work could be praised. In 1957 the condemnation was
global:
9
Nestev, Sergei Prokofiev: His Musical Life, 87.
10
Nestev, Sergei Prokofiev: His Musical Life, 87.
11
I. V. Nest’ev, Prokof’ev (Gos. mus. izd-vo, 1957). The English translation is published as Prokofiev,
trans. Florence Jonas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960).
17
On studying the score of The Buffoon today, one regretfully notes its lack of meaningful
content; it is a far cry from the democratic folk tradition of advanced Russian art. The
grotesquerie in The Buffoon is essentially an end in itself. Folk life and folk art are
refracted through the prism of modernist eccentricity. As a consequence, despite its
seeming gaiety, the work is fundamentally pessimistic.12
Not only was the overall assessment more negative, the criteria for evaluation had
changed dramatically as well. In 1946 the focus was on the effectiveness of the
composer’s technique, but in 1957 the emphasis was on how a composition fit into the
big picture of Soviet ideology. After four pages of biting criticisms about The Buffoon
and unflattering comparisons with compositions by Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov,
Nestev finally conceded, “Nevertheless, for all the grotesque and eccentric effects in the
music of The Buffoon, it would be a mistake not to see in it certain manifestations of a
keen and vital talent.”13 The tacit implication of the 1946 biography was that Prokofiev
came into his own as a composer only after leaving the decadent West and returning
home. In the 1957 publication, this implication became the unifying theme.
In 1973, Nestev’s third and final biography of Prokofiev was published.14 The
result, published during a period of relative openness in the Soviet Union, is an insightful,
thorough study. Although Nestev’s Soviet biases are still evident, this volume generally
treats Prokofiev’s career in a more fair and balanced manner, including expanded
coverage of the years he spent outside of Russia. As if to offset the first, English-only
biography, the 1973 version has not been translated into English. More than just a
“revised and expanded edition,” as labeled on the front cover, this work is one of the
12
Nest’ev, Prokofiev (English translation), 186.
13
Nest’ev, Prokofiev (English translation), 186.
14
I. V. Nest’ev, Zhizn’ Sergeia Prokof’eva, 2d ed. (Moscow: Sovetskii kompositor,1973).
18
most complete biographies of Prokofiev available in any language, preceding by over
fifteen years the less ideologically charged biographies that became the norm in the late
1980s. As a Soviet musicologist who knew the composer personally, Nestev had access
to materials that others still do not, even today. Despite this, though, the volume is still a
reflection of the typical Soviet historiographic view of Prokofiev’s life and works.
Other notable Soviet biographies about Prokofiev are those by Sabinina,
Morozov, and Savkina.15 These three volumes are aimed at a more general audience than
Nestev’s studies were, and therefore are less scholarly, emphasizing biography rather
than musical analysis. Like most authors, Soviet and Western, these three writers divide
Prokofiev’s life into three style periods, which correspond to the country of his residence
at the time. Music composed up to 1918 is considered Prokofiev’s “Russian” period,
1918-32 his “Western” period, and 1932-53 his “Soviet” period. To various extents, each
of these three biographies reflected the typical Soviet historiography of Prokofiev by
minimizing discussion of the years he spent abroad and criticizing the “formalist
experimentalism” of this period, while embracing the composer’s return to his
motherland and stressing the importance of his Soviet compositions.
It was more than a decade after his death before the first Western monograph on
Prokofiev was published, in 1964.16 Like the works of Sabinina, Morozov, and Savkina,
this volume is a biography aimed at a general audience rather than a scholarly study of
15
M. D. Sabinina, Sergei Prokof’ev (Moscow: Muzyka, 1956). Sergei Morozov, Prokof’ev, Zhizn’
zamechatel’nykh liudei, vol. 10 (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1967). N. P. Savkina, Sergei Sergeevich
Prokof’ev (Moscow: Muzyka, 1981), published in English as Prokofiev: His Life and Times, trans.
Catherine Young (Neptune city, NJ: Paganiniana, 1984).
16
Lawrence Hanson and Elisabeth Hanson, Prokofiev: A Biography in Three Movements (New York:
Random House, 1964).
19
Prokofiev’s music. The authors, Lawrence Hanson and Elisabeth Hanson, were a British
husband-and-wife team of biographers. As non-musicians, their goal was primarily to
clarify details of Prokofiev’s biography for the English-speaking public. As the title of
their work reveals, Prokofiev: A Biography in Three Movements, Hanson and Hanson
also grouped Prokofiev’s compositions into three style periods based on where the
composer was living at the time, as Soviet writers had done.17 Not surprisingly, their
assessment of these periods varied from that of their Soviet predecessors, reflecting the
typical Western view of the composer’s life and works. Hanson and Hanson, fore
example, praised the experimentalism and freedom of Prokofiev’s years abroad. In their
introduction, Hanson and Hanson discuss Nestev’s 1957 biography and some of their
motivations for writing their own version of Prokofiev’s biography:
Nestyev [sic] sets out to prove that Prokofiev got harm and nothing but harm from his
many years in the West [. . .] and that he became a great composer only when he returned
to Soviet Russia for the final years of his life. [. . .] The result is a picture of Prokofiev
and his music, which is riddled with misjudgments deliberately made to support a
political creed. In the interests of truth and of Prokofiev himself, we have tried to provide
a corrective to this view. We have no political axe to grind.18
Despite their claim of having no political axe to grind, the Hansons’ biography
clearly reflects the typical Western viewpoint of Prokofiev and his works.
Victor Seroff’s 1968 biography was more blatantly ideological in nature than the
Hansons’ book.19 Seroff’s title, Sergei Prokofiev, A Soviet Tragedy: The Case of Sergei
Prokofiev, His Life and Works, His Critics, and His Executioners, clearly expressed the
17
The book was published simultaneously in Great Britain under the title Prokofiev, The Prodigal Son: An
Introduction to His Life and Work in Three Movements (London: Cassell, 1964).
18
Hanson, Prokofiev, xi.
19
Victor Seroff, Sergei Prokofiev, A Soviet Tragedy: The Case of Sergei Prokofiev, His Life and Work, His
Critics, and His Executioners (New York: Funk and Wagnales, 1968).
20
author’s views. Where Hanson and Hanson suggested the possibility of unfair treatment
and censorship of the composer by the Soviet government, Seroff blatantly accused it.
One of the most notable points of departure between Seroff and other biographers was the
attention he gave to the question of Prokofiev’s marriages. In his 1946 biography, Nestev
did not mention either of Prokofiev’s wives. In the later two biographies, he wrote only
that in 1941 Prokofiev divorced Lina and married Mira. Other Soviet biographers, when
they mentioned Prokofiev’s marital status at all, wrote the same. Hanson and Hanson
also wrote that Prokofiev left Lina for Mira in 1941, but included a footnote with more
information:
Silence and conflicting reports have obscured the events leading to this marital break, and
some time may elapse before the full story can, or will, be revealed. Lina’s subsequent
life, however, points up the fact that political pressures were at work because of her
Western background. In the purge year of 1948 she was arrested and imprisoned. No
reason had been given or has one ever been advanced. She was not released until after
the deaths of Stalin and Prokofiev, which occurred within a few hours of each other in
1953. In 1959 Lina brought an action against Prokofiev’s second wife, claiming his
properties and royalties on the grounds that her divorce was illegal. Though the case was
dismissed and judgment given to the second wife, Lina soon received a state pension
which has continued to this day. For obvious reasons even this information, from close
Soviet sources, cannot be personally acknowledged.20
Seroff chose the issue of Lina’s fate as his platform for portraying the inhumanity
of Stalin’s government and the sway it held over Prokofiev. He alleged not only that
Lina and Prokofiev were never divorced, but also that Prokofiev and Mira were never
married.21 Seroff claimed that since Mira was the niece of the Minister of Heavy
Industry, and since Stalin had recently married the minister’s sister, this gave Mira direct
influence in governmental affairs. Therefore, Prokofiev was forced against his will to ally
20
Hanson, Prokofiev, 276, fn. 1.
21
Seroff went as far as to suggest that Prokofiev and Mira traveled on separate trains during the World War
II evacuations “for the sake of decorum.” (Seroff, A Soviet Tragedy, 251). He believed the entire
arrangement was concocted by Prokofiev and Lina together to protect the boys.
21
himself with a woman with top official connections in order to protect himself from being
sent to the forced labor camps or worse.22 Seroff’s Prokofiev was a man who would
abandon his wife and children for a woman he did not love, just to save his own skin. The
discussion of Prokofiev’s music in Seroff’s volume was secondary; his primary goal was
to expose the broken, weak man into which Seroff was certain the Soviet Union had
turned him. This is a view that has been retained in the work of several Western writers,
even today. Although Seroff raises some interesting points, his book is difficult to read
because of its lack of objectivity. Unlike the Hansons, Seroff did have an axe to grind,
and he made no attempt at objectivity or balance.
In the late 1980s, as the restrictions on foreign researchers eased in the Soviet
Union, two more Western biographies on Prokofiev were published.23 The goal of both
of these books was to present a more objective view of the composer to the non-Russian
speaking world. Each of these authors, Harlow Robinson in 1987 and David Gutman in
1990, addressed the political issues raised by Hanson and Hanson, Seroff, and others, but
attempted to put these issues in the context of Prokofiev’s music and avoided taking an
ideological position themselves as much as possible. This trend has continued since the
fall of the Soviet Union with two more volumes, Michel Dorigné’s 1994 biography in
French, and Daniel Jaffé’s 1998 Sergey Prokofiev.24 Dorigné worked closely with
Prokofiev’s two sons while preparing his book and received access to materials that were
22
Seroff, A Soviet Tragedy, 249.
23
Harlow Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography (New York: Paragon House, 1987). David Gutman,
Prokofiev, The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers (New York: Omnibus, 1990).
24
Michel Dorigné, Serge Prokofiev (Paris: Fayard, 1994). Daniel Jaffé, Sergey Prokofiev (20th-century
Composers) (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1998).
22
not available to earlier researchers. Jaffé worked with Oleg, the younger son, and had
access to photographs and other personal materials.25 His book is well written and
insightful, but adds little new information to Prokofiev research.
The trend towards a more objective view of Prokofiev can also be seen in Soviet
and Russian works since 1990. As their Soviet counterparts did, Russian authors tend to
focus on stylistic analysis as a way out of the necessity to discuss politics. This is as true
today as it was during the Soviet era. To celebrate the 1991 centenary of Prokofiev’s
birth, several volumes of documents and materials about the composer were published in
Russia.26 Many of these focused on information not widely available in the Soviet Union
up to that point, with an emphasis on material from Prokofiev’s years abroad. Especially
useful for Russian and Western scholars alike is Viktor Varunts’ compilation of articles
written by Prokofiev and interviews with the composer spanning the years 1913 to 1952.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, no Russian monograph on Prokofiev has been
published. Russian scholars currently tend to focus on individual compositions or
compositions within a single genre.
25
Sadly, Oleg Prokofiev died suddenly in August 1998. He helped many Prokofiev scholars, including me,
and was very open with his memories, materials, and insights about his father.
26
V. P. Varunts, ed., Prokof’ev o Prokof’eve: Stat’i i interv’iu (Moscow: Sovetskii kompositor, 1991); M.
E. Tarakanov, ed., Sergei Prokof’ev, 1891-1991: Dnevnik, Pis’ma, Becedy, Vospominaniia (Moscow:
Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1991); The entire April 1991 issue of Sovetskaia Muzyka was devoted to Prokofiev
and included a number of previously unpublished letters and documents.
23
Prokofiev’s Return to the Soviet Union
The defining moment in any study of Prokofiev, musical or biographical, is his
return to Stalinist Russia in the mid 1930s after nearly twenty years of living in the
United States and France. As with Prokofiev biographies in general, ideology and politics
play a critical role in determining whether a particular scholar viewed Prokofiev’s return
to the Soviet Union as good or bad for him and his creative output. In a 1999 interview
between the Russian musicologist Yelena Pol’diaeva and the curator of the Serge
Prokofiev Archive in London, Noelle Mann, they discussed the two common views of
Prokofiev’s return, the Soviet and the Western:
N.M. It is well known that for the West, the most important period in Prokofiev’s
biography was the Western period. After that, when he returned…
E.P. …his style was “disfigured under the pressure of socialist realism.” In this is
concentrated the paradigm of Prokofiev’s biography in two inter-reflecting facets. In the
Soviet model, the youth period is qualified as a period of “searching.” The Western
period is the intermediary “years of wandering,” between searching and “finding,” that is,
the return to his homeland. The final period is his progressive creative blossoming.
According to the Western model, the most productive period is the 1920s, while coming
back to the USSR is a fatal mistake, after which nothing could be done. He was broken
down morally and physically, and his style was mutilated in the Stalin meat grinder.27
Pol’diaeva’s summary clearly portrays the two separate historiographies of
Prokofiev’s life and works.
The most outspoken advocate of the Western viewpoint is the American
musicologist Richard Taruskin. This is clearly seen in his 1991 article in honor of the
one hundredth anniversary of Prokofiev's birth, “Prokofiev, Hail . . . and Farewell?,”
where he relished the possibility that the current popularity of Prokofiev's music would
not weather the test of time, due to perceived affiliations between Prokofiev and the
27
Noëlle Mann and Yelena Pol’diaeva, “O Prokof’eve eshchyo mozhno uznat’ mnogo novogo,”
Muzykal’naia Akademiia, No. 2, 2000, 248.
24
Stalin regime.28 Taruskin argued that works such as Prokofiev’s music for the film
Alexander Nevsky cannot and should not be separated from the propagandist message of
the film, and therefore of the music itself. Discussing a 1990 performance in San
Francisco conducted by Kurt Masur, Taruskin wrote:
More upsetting yet was the ovation that followed. Not that it signified approval of
[Alexander Nevsky’s] political message; what dismayed was precisely that no political
message at all had been received, just a rousing piece of music. Just music. Agreeable
noise. Is that what is meant by “succeeding as art”? Surely not: such a display is only
further evidence that pretending art — or “classical music” at the very least — is by
definition apolitical has done more than anything else to marginalize it and trivialize it in
our musically disappointing century.29
Although he praised Prokofiev’s music in general and in Alexander Nevsky
specifically, Taruskin concluded that we must not separate the music from the message.
For those born since the 1930s the composer of “Peter and the Wolf” was the first
composer we got to know and he will always seem a family friend. It would be hard to
kiss him goodbye. But his place in the repertory seems already to be slipping — most
noticeably in his homeland, where there is less prejudice against attending to what his
music is “saying.” If we in the West ever succeed in snapping out of our formalist
stupor, our musical lives will be incomparably enriched, but there will be sacrifices.
Prokofiev may have to be one of them.30
Taruskin continued this theme in a May 1995 New York Times article entitled
“Great Artists Serving Stalin Like a Dog.”31 This time his target was Prokofiev’s score to
Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible. His arguments are similar to those presented in 1991:
Ivan the Terrible painfully poses all the hardest questions involving art and its purposes.
The chief one is this: Is it possible to forget that this movie and this score, whatever their
artistic merits, conveyed as poisonous a message as art has ever been asked to monger?
And from that follow these: Whatever the sympathy we feel for the human plight of
artists who worked under killing constraints, and however strong our human impulse,
28
Richard Taruskin, “Prokofiev, Hail . . . and Farewell?,” The New York Times, 21 April 1991, sec. 2., 25.
29
Taruskin, “Prokofiev, Hail . . . and Farewell?,” 32.
30
Taruskin, “Prokofiev, Hail . . . and Farewell?,” 32.
31
Richard Taruskin, “Great Artists Serving Stalin Like a Dog,” The New York Times, 28 May 1995, sec. 2,
22.
25
therefore, to focus on their “purely artistic” achievement, is it really possible to ignore the
content of their work? And if possible, is it desirable that we make ourselves indifferent
to the horrific ideas to which they lend such compelling artistic support? For make no
mistake: Ivan the Terrible is dedicated to the proposition that abstract historical purposes
justify bloody acts in the here and now.32
Taruskin does admit that at times, especially the last five years of his life,
Prokofiev was a victim of the Stalin regime, but this, in his opinion, does not exonerate
the composer for compositions like Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, written, he
argues, to appease Stalin and glorify the Soviet state.
Ian MacDonald, however, in his 1995 Internet article, “Prokofiev: Prisoner of the
State,” felt Prokofiev was a perpetual victim of the regime, to the detriment of his music,
health and personal life. This portrayal of Prokofiev as victim still reflects the typical
Western point of view of Prokofiev’s return. MacDonald saw Prokofiev’s decision to
return as a combination of the composer’s nostalgia and naiveté:
Nonetheless, Prokofiev remained convinced he should go. Without a doubt, nostalgia
was the main impulse, with the lure of being a big fish in a small pond an enticing
secondary consideration. However, he seems also to have genuinely believed that the
situation in Russia would better not only his own work, but the state of music in
general.33
Once Prokofiev had made his move to the Soviet Union permanent, MacDonald
felt the regime quickly turned on Prokofiev by withholding promised benefits and
opportunities, and striking out against the composer’s works, seemingly randomly:
32
Taruskin, “Serving Stalin Like a Dog,” 22.
33
Ian MacDonald, “Prokofiev, Prisoner of the State: An Interpretation of the Composer’s Relationship
with the Soviet Regime in Three Parts, The Gambler, Into the Fire, and The Protest Music”
(www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/sergei.html, copyright 1995).
26
Desperate to contribute something — anything — to the 20th anniversary, the composer
threw together a concoction of folk-tunes and Party singalongs entitled “Songs of Our
Days.” Mysteriously held back till 1938, the work was thereupon dismissed as “pale and
lacking in individuality.” Prokofiev must by now have been utterly bewildered. If he
wrote like a simpleton, he was a depersonalized Left deviationist; if he wrote like
Prokofiev, he was a mercenary Formalist. Individual, non-individual… there must have
seemed no rhyme or reason to it — and, of course, none existed.34
MacDonald takes too narrow of a view on the effects of Prokofiev’s return.
MacDonald’s article chronicles various acts of censorship and even sabotage of
Prokofiev that McDonald felt the Stalinist government committed. Much of McDonald’s
information is taken from Seroff’s 1968 biography discussed earlier in this chapter, in
which Seroff used any means he could to portray the Soviet Government as malicious
and manipulative in its goal to break and control Prokofiev in the last years of his life.
Consequently, since MacDonald relied heavily on Seroff’s findings, much of the
misinformation and exaggeration present in Seroff’s text also appears in MacDonald’s
work.
Any discussion about the effects of Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union seems
eventually to ask the question: Why did he return? There are a number of commonlygiven responses to this question that, like the issue of the effects of his return, tend to
reflect whether the respondent is from Russia or from the West.
Western scholars have tended to see Prokofiev’s return as an escape from the
West. Dorothea Redepenning summarized the ‘typical’ Western view in her article on
Prokofiev in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition.35 She
noted that Prokofiev himself justified his decision as stemming from homesickness and
34
MacDonald, “Prisoner of the State,” 5.
35
Dorothea Redepenning, “Prokofiev, Sergey,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol.
20, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, MacMillan, 2001), 409-423.
27
nostalgia: “I must see the real winter again and hear the Russian language in my ears.”36
Redepenning dismissed Prokofiev’s explanation, writing, “Such sentiments seem out of
tune with his down-to-earth, clear-thinking character.”37 She saw Prokofiev’s return as
motivated by competition — that Prokofiev wanted to be indisputably, the most
successful composer in whatever country he was in:
One reason for Prokofiev’s departure from America had been Rachmaninoff’s greater
success, and in Europe he came second to Stravinsky; he returned to the Soviet Union
just when Shostakovich was out of the running as a rival.38
In this point of view, Prokofiev first found competition with Rachmaninoff in
America to be too much, so he moved to France. Here, writing ballets for Sergei
Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, the competition with Stravinsky for Diaghilev’s favor
proved to be too much for Prokofiev. Redepennning then asserts that Prokofiev did not
decide to return to the Soviet Union until after the infamous Pravda articles in January of
1936, which condemned Shostakovich and his music, making it nearly impossible for
him to get his music performed. Unfortunately for Redepenning’s argument, Prokofiev’s
decision to return was made long before January 1936. Although he did not receive an
apartment for his family in Moscow until May 1936 by 1932, nearly all of Prokofiev’s
commissions were Soviet, and he was spending much of the year in the Soviet Union.
Since many Western scholars see when he got an apartment in the USSR as the time of
36
Quoted in Redepenning, “Prokofiev,” 413.
37
Redepenning, “Prokofiev,” 413.
38
Redepenning, “Prokofiev,” 414.
28
his official return, it is interesting to note that Prokofiev requested an apartment and
asked the administration of the Bolshoi Theater for help in expediting the process in June
1935.39
Redepenning also lists the promise of travel privileges as a reason for Prokofiev’s
decision to return, a promise that was broken just a few years later:
We must also assume that a decision to return to the Soviet Union was made palatable to
him by promises of privileges. He retained his passport, with which he could travel
abroad without the humiliating petitions usually necessary in the Soviet Union, and he
continued to give guest performances in Europe and even undertook an American tour in
1938. Then the trap snapped shut: he was asked to hand in his passport for the
transaction of a formality, but did not get it back, so that there could be no question of
further tours abroad.40
Like Redepenning, Richard Taruskin believes that Prokofiev’s decision to return
to the Soviet Union was spurred primarily by competition from Stravinsky:
Why did Prokofiev, this famous and successful artist, return to Stalinist Russia after
fifteen years’ celebrity as an émigré? The official Soviet answer had been that in
spiritually bankrupt surroundings Prokofiev had reached a creative impasse that only his
all-forgiving socialist motherland could succor. […] To those familiar with the details of
Prokofiev’s career in the West, moreover, it seems clear that it was Stravinsky, the rival
who always outshone him, who more than anything else drove Prokofiev back into the
arms of the Soviets.41
Taruskin expressed this same view the following year in his discussion of
Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel:
And yet, ironically enough, his inability to get The Fiery Angel produced seems in large
part to have motivated his return. Frustrated in his bid for leadership in the world of
Parisian modernism, where he saw he would always play second fiddle to Stravinsky
(and feeling that ‘there is no room for me’ in America ‘while Rakhmaninov is alive’), he
beat a tactical retreat to a more provincial pond where he would be beyond dispute the
biggest fish.42
39
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 982, l. 19. Letter dated June 5, 1935.
40
Redepenning, “Prokofiev,” 414.
41
Richard Taruskin, “Art and Politics in Prokofiev,” Society, 29 (November and December 1991), 62.
42
Richard Taruskin, “Prokofiev, Sergey,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, v. 3, ed. Stanley Sadie
(London, Macmillan, 1992), 1137.
29
Prokofiev’s “bid for leadership in the world of Parisian modernism” led, in
Taruskin’s view, not only to Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union, but to second-rate
music while he was in the West:
If the works of Prokofiev’s last and longest period are artistically commendable but
unhappily tainted, most of the fruits of his emigration are bruised or rotten, justifiably
discarded and unrevivable. Their surface modernity and their rarity (but for a couple of
concertos) in performance have invested them with a certain enduring snob appeal.
Beneath that surface, though, is emptiness, the perfect emptiness of a prodigiously gifted
musician who was “absolutely” a musician, who just wrote music, or rather, who wrote,
“just music.”43
Nelly Kravets, a Russian musicologist who now lives and works in Israel, showed
the typically Russian/Soviet response to the question of Prokofiev’s return in her 1995
article, “‘. . . Life will not forgive you, people will not understand you’: On Prokofiev’s
emigration.”44 Although she attempted to discuss Prokofiev’s return objectively, her
background as a Soviet-raised musician and scholar shows through, in that she seems to
view the composer’s return as an inevitable homecoming, and primarily beneficial to his
subsequent career:
In my opinion Prokofiev’s life in the West was a gradual prolonged preparation for his
second emigration back to Russia — a process which was happening more
subconsciously than consciously.45
The center of Kravets’ article is her discussion of the possible reasons for
Prokofiev’s decision to return after nearly twenty years in the West. Five of her six
reasons stress Prokofiev’s Russian origins and correlations between Prokofiev’s
43
Taruskin, “Art and Politics in Prokofiev,” 62.
44
Nelly Kravets, “‘. . . Life will not forgive you, people will not understand you’: On Prokofiev’s
emigration,” in Verfemte Musik: Komponisten in den Diktaturen unseres Jahrhunderts (New York: Lang,
1995), 333-41.
45
Kravets, “On Prokofiev’s Emigration,” 335.
30
compositional style and Russian musical traditions. She cites Prokofiev’s concept of
“new simplicity” and the acceptance in Russia of “simplicity of form, less complex
counterpoints, and comprehensible melodies,”46 his obsession with opera, his friendships
with Miaskovsky, Asafiev, and Meyerhold, his overwhelming homesickness, and the
popularity of Prokofiev’s music in Soviet Russia. Only Kravets’ third reason,
Diaghilev’s death, highlights Prokofiev’s dissatisfaction with life in the West, rather than
longing for the familiarity of his homeland.
In the 1999 Mann - Pol’diaeva interview in Muzykal’naia Akademiia, both Mann
and Pol’diaeva expanded on the reasons listed by Kravets. Mann mentioned that Oleg
Prokofiev, the composer’s younger son, when asked about the reasons for his father’s
return, always answered, “In France, Prokofiev never lived fully.”47 Mann agreed with
Oleg and expanded on his answer:
Physically, of course, he was there [in France], but his heart, and most of all his intellect,
remained in Russia. In Russia were his most important correspondents with whom he
discussed important questions. Of course, he appeared in France and the rest of the world
as a pianist, but he needed a circle of close friends, with whom he could talk about
important problems of life. He did not have that in the West.48
Pol’diaeva then brought up the Western theory of competition with Stravinsky as
a reason for Prokofiev’s return:
Stravinsky, in the Conversations with Craft, talks about competition (primarily with
Stravinsky himself), which Prokofiev was unable to endure. This is strange, though.
Prokofiev’s affairs were going very well, and really, is it possible that two such different
Russian composers would get in the way of each other so that one had to leave?49
46
Kravets, “On Prokofiev’s Emigration,” 337.
47
Quoted in Mann and Pol’diaeva, “O Prokof’eve eshchyo mozhno uznat’ mnogo novogo,” 247.
48
Mann and Pol’diaeva, “O Prokof’eve eshchyo mozhno uznat’ mnogo novogo,” 247.
49
Mann and Pol’diaeva, “O Prokof’eve eshchyo mozhno uznat’ mnogo novogo,” 247.
31
Pol’diaeva’s reaction is reflective of the general Soviet/Russian view of
Prokofiev’s return. Prokofiev’s heart and history were in Russia, so he was unable to see
the horror of the Soviet régime, or if he did see it, he was naïve enough to think his fame
and celebrity would protect him.
The problem with both the Western and the Russian/Soviet views of Prokofiev’s
return to the Soviet Union, I believe, is that they seek to provide a single answer, to
determine whether Prokofiev’s return sparked a creative blossoming or if it was a fatal
mistake. The reality of the situation, however, is a much more complex system of
interacting and sometimes contradictory impulses that is more understandable using the
concept of multiple identities. In her work on Shostakovich, Margarita Mazo defined
multiple identities:
Identity [is] a multifaceted and fundamentally pluralistic phenomenon, a phenomenon
that is fragmented, dispersed, and heterogeneous, with a complexity of polarities, even
conflicts, all existing in their simultaneity. One would believe that a modern person, as
someone who can accept the multiplicity of truths, is certainly capable of accepting the
preponderance and complexity of identity. Taking that as a lens, then, allows us to
examine how the individual understands, constructs, and performs the self.50
Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union, then, would best be viewed not in terms of
good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, but rather as a network of reasons and results,
reflecting different aspects of his pluralistic identity. Prokofiev as a man and as a
composer had a number of different facets to his personality, each valid, not mutually
50
Margarita Mazo, “Beyond Nationalism: Constructing and Negotiating Heterogeneous Identity,” formal
response to the session “Defining a Nation: Polish Communities and Symbols in Music,” American
Musicological Society, Kansas City, 1999.
32
exclusive as most authors present them. The various Prokofievs, identified by Taruskin,
MacDonald, Redepenning, Kravets, Pol’diaeva and others, all co-existed within the same
man.
Romeo and Juliet and Its Place in Prokofiev’s Work
The common scholarly assessment of Romeo and Juliet, both in Russia and in the
West, views it as Prokofiev’s first “Soviet” ballet, setting it apart from his ballets written
earlier, while he was living in the West. In Soviet writings, it is Prokofiev’s return to the
Soviet Union that sparks a new direction in Prokofiev’s compositional style, first seen in
Romeo and Juliet. The Soviet critic Mikhail Druskin, for example, began his 1940
review of the ballet by stating:
Romeo and Juliet opens a new phase in the creative works of Prokofiev. Long years of
searching for simplicity and expressive writing are marked with great success. It is no
accident that this success is connected with the period of the composer’s return to his
homeland.51
In 1957, in the second of his three Prokofiev biographies discussed earlier in this
chapter, Israel Nestev identified the same phenomenon:
Romeo and Juliet marked a truly revolutionary leap in Prokofiev’s artistic development, a
leap from cold experimentalism to a consistent affirmation of realism. [...] Here we find
no trace of surface inventiveness, grotesquerie or expressionist hyperbole, and none of
the anemic intellectual abstractions of his Paris period.52
In her 1962 monograph on Prokofiev’s ballets, Svetlana Katonova mentioned in
passing that Prokofiev wrote a few short ballets in the West, each of which was flawed by
51
M. Druskin, “Balet ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’ Prokof’eva,” Sovetskaia muzyka (No. 3, 1940): 10.
52
I. V. Nest’ev, Prokofiev, translated by Florence Jonas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), 266.
33
“clear signs of musical crisis.” Her discussion begins in earnest with Romeo and Juliet,
the first of the three “ballet masterpieces” written by the composer after his return to his
homeland.53
Although they downplay the role Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union had in
this change, Western writers, especially the more recent authors, also identify Romeo and
Juliet with a shift in the composer’s style. Harlow Robinson wrote, “Romeo represents a
giant step forward in Prokofiev’s evolution as a dramatic and symphonic composer. It is
a remarkable synthesis of different aspects of his musical personality.”54 David Gutman
noted, “Yet within these constraints Prokofiev breaks new ground with his most cohesive
piece of musical theatre to date. With Romeo and Juliet he had transcended the
limitations of his earlier experiments in the genre.”55 In his 1998 monograph, Daniel
Jaffé wrote “Romeo and Juliet marks the culmination of Prokofiev’s dramatic art. In
none of his earlier works had he drawn so convincing a gallery of characters.”56
The interpretation of these changes varies from author to author, but each of them
viewed Romeo and Juliet as a stylistic turning point in Prokofiev’s compositions. In some
aspects, this is justifiable. Prokofiev’s six pre-Romeo and Juliet ballets, Ala and Lolli,
The Buffoon, Trapeze, Stal’noi Skok (The Steel Step), The Prodigal Son, and On the
Dnepr, are all single-act ballets. Romeo and Juliet and the two ballets written after it,
53
Katonova, Balety S. Prokof’eva, 7.
54
Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev, 303.
55
Gutman, Prokofiev, 160.
56
Jaffé, Sergey Prokofiev, 136.
34
Cinderella and The Stone Flower, are full-length, multiple-act ballets. It is interesting to
note further that the one-act ballets were all composed for European audiences, while
the three full-length ballets were written for the Soviet stage. Prokofiev made the
following observations about this phenomenon in a discussion of On the Dnepr:
We [Russians] love long ballets that fill up an entire evening. Abroad they prefer them
shorter and offer either three one-act ballets in an evening, or a one-act ballet together
with a short opera. The difference in this point of view arises because we attach more
importance to the plot and its development, while abroad they consider that the plot of a
ballet plays a secondary role. Three one-act ballets give the opportunity to receive in one
evening a greater variety of impressions, from three sets of artists, choreographers and
composers.57
Despite the outward differences between Romeo and Juliet and the ballets that
preceded it, though, there are many stylistic similarities as well. The lyricism of The
Prodigal Son, for example, is often compared to that of Romeo and Juliet. Both The
Buffoon and Cinderella share fairy tale roots, while traditional Russian folktales are the
basis for On the Dnepr and The Stone Flower.
In his many writings, Prokofiev often discussed aspects of his compositional
style. While he acknowledged shifts in emphasis at various points in his career, he saw
his compositional style as reflecting a number of simultaneously occurring trends, rather
than viewing each shift as a turning point. He felt that identifying specific turning points,
which implied a rejection of what came earlier, was not accurate, and moreover, distorted
his intentions. He preferred to say that his aesthetic goals changed from piece to piece,
resulting in a variety of styles in his work. This is a circular rather than a linear view of
stylistic change. A turning point indicates rejection and prohibits a return to earlier
57
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 69.
35
methods. A shift in emphasis, however, implies the possibility of revisiting an earlier
style if the composer so desires. Prokofiev identified four styles or “lines,” as he called
them, in his autobiography:
Here I want to stop for analysis of the primary lines along which my work has moved.
The first is the classical line, with its beginnings in my early childhood, when I heard my
mother play the sonatas of Beethoven. This line takes a neo-classical form (sonatas,
concertos), and imitates the classic eighteenth century (gavottes, Classical Symphony,
parts of the Sinfonietta). The second is the innovative line, coming from the meeting
with Taneev when he reproached my ‘simple harmonies.’ At first this line was a search
for my own harmonic language, then changed into a search for a language to express
strong emotions (The Phantom, Despair, Sarcasms, Scythian Suite, a few of the
Romances, op. 23, The Gambler, They are Seven, the Quintet, Symphony No. 2).
Although this line primarily addresses harmonic language, it also concerns innovations in
the intonations of melody, in instrumentation and in drama. The third is the toccata or
perhaps the motor line, probably springing from a Schumann toccata which made a big
impression on me when I heard it (Etudes, op. 1, Toccata, op. 11, Scherzo, op. 12,
Scherzo from the Concerto No. 2, Scherzo from the Concerto No. 5, also the compressed,
repeating figure in the Scythian Suite, The Age of Steel and passages in the Concerto No.
3). This line, perhaps, is the least important. The fourth line is the lyrical line. It appears
at first to be contemplative, at times not entirely associated with melody, or in any case,
with long melody (Fairy Tale, op. 3, Dreams, Autumnal, Romances, op. 9, Legend, op.
12), sometimes more or less associated with long melody (the Choruses on texts of
Balmont, the beginning of the Violin Concerto No. 1, the Romances on texts of
Akhmatova, Grandmother’s Tales). This line was either left unnoticed or discovered at a
later time. For a long time the presence of the lyrical in my work was strongly denied,
and, unencouraged, it developed slowly. But then, as time passed, I began to pay more
and more attention to this line.58
Prokofiev saw all four of these lines as reoccurring, coexisting and
complementary aspects of his style. The examples he chose for each line were taken
from all of his works, regardless of genre or time of composition. As Prokofiev himself
noted, however, the so-called lyrical line began to receive more of his attention as time
passed. This may or may not be the result of Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union, even
though Western writers portray it as such.
Writers looking for a specific turning point in Prokofiev’s style frequently turn to
what the composer himself called “New Simplicity.” Loosely equivalent to the lyrical
58
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 31-32.
36
line, “New Simplicity” is most often used to label music composed after Prokofiev’s
return to the Soviet Union. In fact the concept and even the term became prominent in
Prokofiev’s own descriptions of his music as early as 1930. Prokofiev described “New
Simplicity” as a reaction against modernism, the rejection of complexity and dissonance
in favor of clarity of expression characterized by clearly defined melodies supported by
uncluttered orchestration.59 These are characteristics frequently attributed to both Romeo
and Juliet and The Prodigal Son. Yet, like the ‘lines’ described in his autobiography,
“New Simplicity” was one tool in his stylistic arsenal, one that he used more frequently
in his later years, but never exclusively.
There is some validity in considering Romeo and Juliet as a stylistic turning point
in Prokofiev’s ballet compositions, but it can be very limiting for understanding the larger
picture of Prokofiev’s creative output. This study proposes an assessment that more
strongly emphasizes the parallels between Romeo and Juliet and Prokofiev’s earlier
ballets and views Romeo and Juliet as reflecting one aspect of Prokofiev’s compositional
style, not as a rejection of all that came before. As shown in Chapter 4, Prokofiev’s
approach to ballet composition remained remarkably consistent throughout his career,
and further, recalls the techniques he used more successfully in the related genres of film
music and incidental music for plays. More than just writing the notes, per se, this
approach also included Prokofiev’s choice of collaborators for his ballet projects, the
59
M. Bayer, “Prokof’ev provodit razlichie mezhdu modernizmom i sovremennost’iu,” Musical Leader
(Chicago), 3 February 1930, translated by V. P. Varunts, published in V. P. Varunts, Prokof’ev o
Prokof’eve (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1991), 89-90. B. Usher, “Prokof’ev nadeetsia, chto nastupaet
period ‘novoi prostoty’ v myzyke,” Los Angeles Evening Express, 19 February 1930, translated by V. P.
Varunts, published in Varunts, Prokof’ev o Prokof’eva, 90-91. “Nazad k prostote muzyki,” Prager Presse
(Prague), 12 January 1932, translated by V. P. Varunts, published in Varunts, Prokof’ev o Prokof’eva, 100101.
37
working relationships he developed with these collaborators, the types of projects
selected, the artistic and aesthetic goals of the work, the actual compositional method,
including extensive pre-compositional planning, and even the criteria for measuring the
success or failure of a composition. As discussed in Chapter 6, Prokofiev’s inflexibility
during the rehearsal process of the 1940 production of Romeo and Juliet is legendary.
These colorful episodes, though, obscure the high degree of collaboration and
cooperation between Prokofiev and Sergei Radlov that went into the creation of the 1935
score. This flexibility and dependence on the creative ideas of his collaborators during
the planning stages is a trait found in the history of all his ballets, as is the inflexibility
and often open hostility directed at anyone who tried to alter what Prokofiev considered a
finished composition. Despite this, it was extremely important to Prokofiev to see his
works staged, and the practice of compromise in order to get a performance happened
more than once in the history of Romeo and Juliet, and can be found in several of his
other ballets as well.
38
CHAPTER 2
SETTING THE STAGE: THEATER AND DANCE IN RUSSIA
IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet was greatly influenced by various trends in Russian
theater and dance during the period of the ballet’s creation. The purpose of this chapter is
to contextualize Prokofiev’s ballets, especially Romeo and Juliet, in terms of the major
trends and figures working in the theater and dance in the early years of the twentieth
century, and establish how each was influential on Prokofiev and his collaborators in the
creation of Romeo and Juliet.
Vsevolod Meyerhold and Early Twentieth-Century Experimental Theater
In Russia, theater was perhaps the most influential and experimental of the
performing arts in the early twentieth century. Unlike music and dance, which existed
primarily in only the largest cities and in just a few state-sponsored venues, experimental
theater was much more widespread, thriving throughout the country, including in small
studio theaters.
Perhaps the most preeminent theater director in Russia during the early twentieth
century was Vsevolod Meyerhold (1873-1940). He was on the leading edge of
experimental theater in Russia for nearly forty years. Meyerhold started as a realist,
39
working with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Konstantin Stanislavsky, but soon
branched out, experimenting with symbolism, commedia dell’arte style, elements from
Japanese kabuki theater, biomechanics, and constructivism, and other styles as well.60
After studying with Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Philharmonic Society
Theater school, Meyerhold became one of the original members of the Moscow Art
Theater (MKhT), founded in 1898 by Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky. MKhT
productions explored Nemirovich-Danchenko’s and Stanislavsky’s theories of realism in
stage productions.61 In 1902 Meyerhold left MKhT to co-direct his own company, the
Troupe of Russian Dramatic Artists. After a short tenure in the Russian provinces,
Meyerhold returned to Moscow in 1905, and at Stanislavsky’s behest, headed the
Moscow Theatre-Studio, attempting to find an effective method of theatrical symbolism.
Although a number of productions were rehearsed, none were ever staged at the TheatreStudio, and the studio was permanently closed after the 1905 revolution.62
In 1906, Meyerhold became the director of the St. Petersburg company of the
well-known actress Vera Komisarjevskaya for two years. After being dismissed by
Komisarjevskaya, Meyerhold became director of the Imperial Theaters of St. Petersburg
in 1908, staging plays at the Alexandrinsky Theater and operas at the Mariinsky Theater,
including a number of very prominent and innovative productions, such as the 1909
production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, notable for his use of the
60
Samuel L. Leiter, The Great Stage Directors: 100 Distinguished Careers of the Theater (New York:
Facts On File, 1994), 201.
61
Leiter, The Great Stage Directors, 274.
62
Leiter, From Stanislavsky to Barrault, 46.
40
grotesque.63 Meyerhold remained the director of the imperial Theaters until 1917, at the
end of the Russian Revolution. While creating acceptable productions for the
conservative Imperial Theaters, Meyerhold indulged his experimental side designing
controversial stagings for unofficial venues like cabarets and private residences.64 It was
during this time that he immersed himself in commedia dell’arte style, using its old street
fair traditions to create an exaggerated, ironic style of the grotesque.65 One result of this
was the journal The Love for Three Oranges, published by Meyerhold from 1914-16.
The title for the journal was taken from a commedia dell’arte play by Carlo Gozzi, which
was very influential on Meyerhold and his approach to theater at the time.66
Meyerhold welcomed the Russian Revolution and the new Soviet government.
He became a member of the Communist party and directed the first Soviet play, a 1918
production of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe.67 In 1921, as the head of the
Meyerhold Workshop, Meyerhold developed a number of new theories of revolutionary
art. Chief among these was his theory of biomechanics, “a form of training aimed at
developing actors who would be part athletes, part acrobats, part animated machines.”68
Like many of his fellow revolutionaries, Meyerhold viewed the machine as a
representative symbol of modern, and therefore, according to the then current view,
63
John W. Frick and Stephen M. Vallillo, eds, Theatrical Directors: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994), 266.
64
Leiter, The Great Stage Directors, 201.
65
Leiter, From Stanislavsky to Barrault, 51.
66
Frick and Vallillo, Theatrical Directors, 266.
67
Leiter, From Stanislavsky to Barrault, 54.
68
Roose-Evans, Experimental Theater, 26.
41
Soviet life. Biomechanics as an acting method was supposedly linked to scientific
notions, especially that of conditioned reflex behavior and time-motion studies. All
movements of an actor, according to Meyerhold, were to be reduced to just their most
essential aspects, and be based on rhythm, a center of gravity, and stability.69 The results
gave Meyerhold’s productions a fluid almost musical quality. In fact, Meyerhold’s 1926
staging of Gogol’s The Inspector General inspired perhaps one of the most “modern”
operas, Shostakovich’s The Nose, also based on a short story by Gogol.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Meyerhold began to chafe under the restrictions
imposed by the Stalin regime in all areas of the arts. Instead of encouraging
experimentalism, as was done in 1917, the government attempted to control creative
output, insisting on conformity to the state-sponsored policy of socialist realism.
Meyerhold became increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the government, and was
arrested, sent to a concentration camp and executed in 1940.
Meyerhold and his ideas were extremely influential on Prokofiev. The two men
first met in 1916, while Meyerhold was director of the Imperial Theaters, and their
friendship lasted until Meyerhold’s arrest, in 1939. When they first met in 1916,
Prokofiev hoped that Meyerhold would direct his opera The Gambler at the Mariinsky
Theater. Meyerhold was busy with other projects, but did suggest the young composer
consider writing a new opera based on Gozzi’s The Love for Three Oranges. When
Prokofiev departed for America in 1918, Meyerhold’s farewell gift was the 1914
inaugural issue of The Love for Three Oranges journal, which contained a Russian
translation of Gozzi’s play. Prokofiev sketched out a libretto for The Love for Three
69
Leiter, From Stanislavsky to Barrault, 55-6
42
Oranges during his ocean voyage, and the results, Prokofiev’s most successful opera,
premiered in Chicago in 1921. Prokofiev and Meyerhold met several times during
Prokofiev’s 1927 concert tour of the Soviet Union, his first trip back since leaving in
1918. During this time, Prokofiev saw a production of The Love for Three Oranges in
Leningrad, staged by Meyerhold’s former student and Prokofiev’s future collaborator for
Romeo and Juliet, Sergei Radlov. Prokofiev and Meyerhold also worked together on
revisions to Prokofiev’s opera The Gambler, in the hopes of staging it in Leningrad with
Radlov as director. The production never happened. From 1927 on, Meyerhold and
Prokofiev were regular correspondents. They worked on a number of projects together,
including incidental music for a new production of Boris Godunov, and Prokofiev’s opera
Semyon Kotko, but none of these were staged during Meyerhold’s lifetime.
Sergei Radlov and His Approach to Theater
Prokofiev’s primary collaborator in creating Romeo and Juliet was Sergei
Ernestovich Radlov (1892-1958), a student of Meyerhold. Radlov became a well-known
avant-garde director in Leningrad in the 1920s and 1930s, specializing in experimental
stagings of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Radlov was an innovative stage director who found
success in a variety of styles and genres. Much of his work was influenced by
Meyerhold, though his own unique style, especially prominent in his stagings of
Shakespeare’s tragedies, was also clearly visible.
In 1913, Radlov became a poetry student at Meyerhold’s newly opened studio in
St. Petersburg. The studio was a side project of Meyerhold’s while he was director of the
Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg. Radlov quickly became a leader in the Eighteenth43
Century Group within the studio. This group was characterized by their experimental
stagings based on “romantic subjects and a softness, elegance, and affectation of
performance.”70 Radlov’s literary endeavors, including poems, articles, and translations,
frequently appeared in Meyerhold’s The Love for Three Oranges journal.
Radlov soon became an apprentice director under Meyerhold. In 1918 he helped
found the Theater of Experimental Productions, a branch of the Theater Department of
the People’s Commissariat of Education. Radlov also became a teacher at
KURMASCEP, The Courses for Mastership of Scenic Productions in Petrograd, and
became its manager after Meyerhold’s departure in 1919.71
From 1918 until the mid-1920s, Radlov was associated with several experimental
theaters as a director and playwright. His work from this period is clearly influenced by
Meyerhold’s concepts of synthetic theater, incorporating topical political agitation with
circus and acrobatic elements. In 1919, for the second anniversary of the October
Revolution, Radlov staged a production of Kamensky’s Sten’ka Razin at the Theater of
the Baltic Fleet with choreography by another future Prokofiev collaborator, Boris
Romanov.72 Especially notable during this period were the productions at the Popular
Comedy Theater, where Radlov worked from 1920-1922. Following the closure of the
70
David Zolotnitsky, Sergei Radlov: The Shapespearean Fate of a Soviet Director, tr. Tatiana A. Ganf,
Natalia A. Egunova, and Olga V. Krasikova ([n.p.]: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 4.
71
Zolotnitsky, Radlov, 5.
72
Elizabeth Suritz, Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s, tr. Lynn Vission, ed. Sally Banes (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1990) 53.
44
Popular Comedy, Radlov organized the Theatrical Experimental Workshop, where he had
a falling out with Meyerhold. Nikolai Golubentsev, an actor with the workshop,
described a 1923 visit by Meyerhold to a Workshop production:
Meyerhold’s interest was gradually but clearly fading. An expression of either boredom
or distaste appeared in his eyes. And when, finally, we started our best performance,
Opus No. 1, he frankly turned away from the stage and looked out at the window. Radlov
was alarmed.73
According to Valentina Khodasevich, a set and costume designer who frequently
worked with Radlov, he had every reason to be alarmed:
After the first act Meyerhold appeared behind the wings, looking gloomy and angry, and
attacked Radlov, accusing him of plagiarism, shouting in the presence of terror-stricken
actors that what he had just seen was talentless, and as for the ideas, they had been stolen
from him! After which he rushed headlong out of the room. . . . [Radlov], a very gentle
and polite man, listened to him with trembling lips and even his face twitched. After this
episode, Meyerhold, whenever possible, spoke against Radlov in public, and Radlov did
the same against Meyerhold. Their friendship was at an end.74
It was their joint work on Radlov’s 1926 production of Prokofiev’s The Love for
Three Oranges that helped end the feud between Radlov and Meyerhold. Though shortlived, the break with Meyerhold had long-term ramifications for Radlov’s career. The
Theatrical Experimental Workshop ceased to exist soon after Meyerhold’s visit, and
Radlov focused his energies on his teaching at the Institute for Stage Arts, a position he
held from 1922 to 1928. He severed his formal relationship with the Institute in 1928
and, with many of the same students, formed the Theater of the Young, which, in 1934,
was renamed the Studio Theater under the Direction of Sergei Radlov. In his productions
for the Institute of Stage Arts, Radlov’s vision as a director matured, moving away from
the direct influence of Meyerhold found in nearly all of his earlier stagings. Adrian
73
Quoted in Zolotnitsky, Radlov, 32.
74
Quoted in Zolotnitsky, Radlov, 32.
45
Piotrovsky, a lifelong friend and collaborator of Radlov’s and future librettist for
Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, commented in 1924 on Radlov’s new “orientation on the
primary elements of performance, namely tempo, scenic space, emotionality . . . and the
rejection of extremes such as excessive psychologism [sic] and a passion for mechanical
tricks.”75 Although Radlov continued to produce comedies, in the mid-1920s, as will be
discussed later in this chapter, he began to concentrate on staging tragedies, especially
those of William Shakespeare.
Radlov also had close ties to the dance world and was actively involved in a
number of ballet productions before collaborating with Prokofiev on Romeo and Juliet.
In 1925, while he was still at the Institute for Stage Arts, Radlov was hired by the State
Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet (GATOB)76 to oversee a production of Schreker’s
opera Der Ferne Klang. Radlov directed a number of operas at GATOB, including
Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges and Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov.77 In 1931, Radlov
was appointed artistic director of the theater, a post he held concurrently with the
leadership of his Studio Theater. In 1932 Radlov directed his first ballet, Asafiev’s The
Flames of Paris, with choreography by Vasily Vainonen. In his early comedies, Radlov
incorporated acrobatic and circus components into his productions to make them more
appealing to an audience of Soviet workers. In staging Shakespeare’s tragedies, he strove
75
Quoted in Zolotnitsky, Radlov, 36.
76
The former Mariinsky Theater of Opera and Ballet. In 1935, the theater was renamed the Kirov State
Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet and in 1992 was renamed the Mariinsky State Academic Theater of
Opera and Ballet. For references before December 1934, the theater is referred to as GATOB, for events
occurring after 1934, GATOB and the Kirov Theater are used interchangeably.
77
Radlov’s production of The Love for Three Oranges is discussed in greater detail earlier in this chapter.
The 1928 production of Boris Godunov was the first to use Musorgsky’s own instrumentation.
46
to make the works more ‘alive’ by infusing elements of lightness and optimism into the
texture. In his production of The Flames of Paris, he saw himself as an innovator,
bringing the emotional intensity of the dramatic theater to the ballet stage:
This ballet is not a pure ballet, it was created as one of the harbingers of a future
breakdown of genres, [and] the chorus is organically woven into the fabric of the dance
and pantomime.78
Every dance, both solo and of the corps-de-ballet, has both an emotional and a logical
motivation and organically flows from pantomime. To speak about the French
Revolution with the ‘typical’ ballet language is not possible. Here, a continuous and
forceful action is needed. This is provided by emotionally rich pantomime, crowd
scenes, and finally, the chorus, which I use for the first time in a ballet production.79
These were effective, but not original ideas, and Radlov, despite his assertions
otherwise, was not the first to incorporate them. His concepts, from the use of
pantomime and the rejection of classical ballet steps to the contemporarily relevant
subject matter, can be traced back to others, most notably the naturalism of Michel
Fokine, which will be discussed later in this chapter.
In 1934 Radlov and Asafiev again collaborated on a ballet for GATOB, The
Fountain of Bakchisarai, based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin. Radlov was described
in the credits as General Artistic Supervisor, a foreshadowing of the role he would play in
the creation of Prokofiev’s ballet version of Romeo and Juliet. The choreographer for
The Fountaion of Bakchisarai was a former student of Radlov’s at the Institute for Stage
Arts, Rostislav Zakharov.
The Fountain of Bakchisarai, like The Flames of Paris, was staged in the thenpopular style dubbed “choreo-drama,” for its combination of dance and pantomime.
78
Quoted in David Zolotnitskii, “Baletnaia Rezhissura Sergeia Radlova,” Balet (April-May 1998), 30.
79
Quoted in Zolotnitskii, “Baletnaia Rezhissura,” 30.
47
Again, this was not a new idea. In 1928 the critic Gvozdev declared, “A narrative
pantomime with a new, modern plot — that is the fundamental, chief task of modern
ballet.”80 Elizabeth Suritz observed:
[By the late 1920s], when the leading genre in literature was the psychological novel,
when drama and cinema attempted to show real life and people in that real life, the
choreographic theater, which in the last analysis faced similar goals, moved towards the
dance-drama.81
Radlov and Zakharov’s The Fountain of Bakchisarai was considered an
innovative production not because it “[had] both an emotional and a logical motivation
and organically [flowed] from pantomime,”82 but because of the manner in which these
ideas were expressed. The ballet was one of the first to treat successfully a literary
classic on the Soviet stage. It started a trend of ballet productions based on Pushkin and
Shakespeare, including Romeo and Juliet.83
The first time Prokofiev and Radlov worked together was for Romeo and Juliet in
1935, but their acquaintance began during Prokofiev’s years at the St. Petersburg
conservatory. Radlov’s personal papers include a letter from Prokofiev addressed “My
dear Maestro,” expressing his regrets for having to miss two gatherings, and inviting
Radlov to his home for a chess game.84 In the diary of his 1927 concert tour of the Soviet
Union, Prokofiev wrote, “I am astonished and delighted with the ingenuity and liveliness
80
A. Gvozdev, 1928. Quoted in Suritz, Soviet Choreographers, 323.
81
Suritz, Soviet Choreographers, 322.
82
Quoted in Zolotnitskii, “Baletnaia Rezhissura,” 30.
83
Asafiev wrote the music to a number of Pushkin-inspired ballets, including Prisoner of the Caucasus,
The Peasant Girl, The Stone Guest, and A Cottage in Kolomna.
84
RPB, fond 625, no. 465, l. 5. The letter is undated, but identifies Prokofiev’s address as 90 Sadovaia
ulitsa, where he lived until 1909.
48
of Radlov’s production [of The Love for Three Oranges], and embrace my old chess
partner.85 Even in his later correspondence with Radlov, Prokofiev talked as much about
chess as music:
I just cannot keep quiet, I must tell you about the game where I beat Tartakover. I am
sending you the moves so you may study the characteristic particulars of my style and
properly incinerate me this fall when we meet. I should be in Leningrad during the
second half of October and the second half of November, if you haven’t changed your
dates for Oranges.86
Though they already knew each other, Prokofiev and Radlov’s professional
relationship was facilitated through the efforts of Meyerhold. It was on Meyerhold’s
suggestion that Radlov directed the 1926 production of The Love for Three Oranges that
Prokofiev saw in February 1927, while touring the Soviet Union. Prokofiev’s reaction to
the production was overwhelmingly positive. He devoted over four pages in his diary to
Radlov’s Oranges, describing the performance and his reaction in minute detail:
Somehow all the inventive little touches got me into the swing of the performance right
from the start, and it was clear the production had been conceived with enthusiasm and
talent. Other tricks followed and each amused me very much: Truffaldino, when
summoned from the hall, actually flew down from the top of the stage (a doll instantly
substituted by a man); there was an absolutely fantastic hell which grew to an
overwhelming size with dolls floating and cavorting around on all levels of the stage; the
magician Tchelio was amusingly dressed up as Grandfather Frost; and the table with
Smeraldina hidden underneath ran after Leander, the better to overhear the plot he was
hatching with Clarissa.87
The commedia dell’arte elements of Gozzi’s play made Prokofiev’s opera a
perfect vehicle for the techniques Radlov learned from Meyerhold and practiced during
85
Prokofiev, Soviet Diary, 79. Entry for February 10, 1927.
86
RPB, fond 625, no. 465, l. 1. Postcard dated April 21, 1933.
87
Prokofiev, Soviet Diary, 77. Entry for February 10, 1927. The emphases are Prokofiev’s.
49
the early 1920s, especially for his productions at the Popular Comedy. Though
Meyerhold was not directly involved, his influences saturated Radlov’s production of The
Love for Three Oranges. The critic Anton Uglov wrote:
The elements of ‘Meyerholdism,’ biomechanics in the acting and in the sets (a rope nettrapeze from the floor to the ceiling of the stage, flying devils, etc.) [and] a
cinematographic use of colored reflectors, make the opera an enticing spectacle.88
Since Prokofiev enjoyed Radlov’s production so much, he saw it a second time a
week later. Ivan Excousovich, the general director of GATOB, asked Prokofiev to write
down all of his comments and criticisms of the performance.89 These comments were
apparently passed on to Radlov, perhaps for consideration in his 1932 revival of the
production.90 From 1927 on, Radlov and Prokofiev kept in touch with each other’s
projects though Asafiev and Meyerhold, and occasionally communicated directly, as in
the 1933 postcard mentioned earlier.
Radlov’s 1935 Drama Production of Romeo and Juliet
Although the influence of Meyerhold and commedia dell’arte elements were the
basis of Radlov’s staging of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges in 1926, it was
Radlov’s experimental stagings of Shakespeare that served as the creative starting point
for Prokofiev and Radlov’s Romeo and Juliet ballet.
88
Quoted in Zolotnitsky, Radlov, 77.
89
Prokofiev, Soviet Diary, 103. Entry for February 19, 1927.
90
RNB, fond 625, no. 217. This three-page handwritten document is labeled as Radlov’s 1926 rehearsal
notes for The Love for Three Oranges. In fact, it is Prokofiev’s handwriting, and is most likely the notes
requested by Excousovich in 1927. Prokofiev wrote down precise remarks by rehearsal number in the
score such as “Reh. no. 49. Pantalon should not sing, but orate. Reh. no 51. Livelier tempo” (l. 1).
50
Radlov was just one of several influential Soviet directors who became interested
in staging Shakespeare’s tragedies. In the mid-1920s and 1930s, the plays of
Shakespeare were frequently performed in productions by Meyerhold, Stanislavsky,
Tairov, Akimov, Okhlopkov, and others. During these years, directors moved away from
the circus-based entertainments popular following the October revolution, and began
searching for ways to present the “classics” of world literature in a manner
understandable and more importantly, relevant to the proletarian masses. The starting
point for these productions was the portrayal of Shakespeare as a realist with a message
that transcended time and place. Although he was writing about one particular
production of Othello, staged by Radlov in 1935, the comments of the critic A. Smirnov
concisely summarized the goal of performing Shakespeare tragedies in general during
this time:
The instructive aspect of this performance, so ardently received by the public . . . has
shown that the best way to bring Shakespeare closer to us is to restore him in his pure
form, without any modernization or embellishments.91
Three directors, Nikolai Akimov and Nikolai Okhlopkov in Moscow, and Radlov
in Leningrad, produced the most popular and talked-about productions, often competing
with concurrent performances of the same play. The critics debated the merits and
drawbacks of each production, compared the vision of each director and how successfully
this vision was communicated to the audience.92
91
Quoted in Zolotnitsky, Radlov, 139.
92
From 1934-1936, for example, nearly every issue of Teatr i Dramaturgia, Rabochii i Teatr, Literaturny
Leningrad, and other journals of the performing arts, included at least one article or review about a
production of Shakespeare. A new production by Akimov, Okhlopkov or Radlov would create an
especially large stir: the relative merits of two 1935 productions of Othello by Okhlopkov and Radlov
were still being discussed in 1939 articles celebrating the 375th birthday of the Bard. (cf: “Shekspir na
Sovetskoi Stsene.” Vecherniaia Moskva, 19 April 1939).
51
Radlov wrote prolifically about his approach to Shakespeare. Among his
concerns was the issue touched upon by Smirnov, the challenge of presenting classics
without “modernization or embellishment.” In a 1936 article, “Shakespeare and
Problems for Directors,” Radlov wrote:
It seems to me that the central questions are as follows: Which is more important? The
play as staged by the director, or his personal interest in this performance? The theme
treated by the author, or the personal success of the director in this production? How the
director is able to convey Shakespeare or how he demonstrates his own directorial
personality? . . . We must be convinced that Hamlet is more interesting than Akimov, that
Othello is more valuable than Radlov, that Romeo and Juliet is larger than Popov, and
that Anthony and Cleopatra is bigger than Tairov.93
One of the debates that raged in the journals centered around the question, was
Shakespeare an optimist or a pessimist? Radlov asserted that the question was
misleading. Since Shakespeare was fundamentally a realist, there are elements of
optimism and pessimism in all of his works.94 To Radlov, the director’s challenge was to
present both elements without overshadowing one or the other:
If saying that [Shakespeare] is an optimist, one should not color the entire play with rosecolored paint. If saying that he is a pessimist, one should not color everything with thick
black paint.95
Radlov was not alone in this understanding. The concept of portraying comedic
elements within the context of a tragic drama had been explored by many authors and
directors at the time. In 1934, a play by Vsevolod Vishnevsky called Optimistic Tragedy
93
Sergei Radlov, “Shekspir i Problemy Rezhissury,” Teatr i Dramaturgiia 35 (Feb. 1936), 57.
94
RNB, fond 625 [Radlov], no. 141, l. 2. Sergei Radlov, “Moia rabota nad Shekspirom,” Unpublished
paper read March 7, 1936.
95
Radlov, “Shekspir i Problemy Rezhissury,” 58.
52
was staged. The production was a popular and critical success, and the term “optimistic
tragedy” was borrowed by the press and the directors themselves in describing the
combination of optimism and pessimism they found in the tragedies of Shakespeare.
By 1934, Socialist Realism, the official government-sanctioned approach to
literature and the arts, was firmly established. Socialist Realism, as defined by Andrei
Zhdanov at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, aimed “to depict
reality in its revolutionary development,” and called upon Soviet artists and writers to
produce “works attuned to the epoch.”96 On April 28, 1934, Radlov’s Studio Theater
gave its first performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The production would
serve as the inspiration for Radlov and Prokofiev’s ballet the following year. In staging
Romeo and Juliet, Radlov strove to underscore what he saw as parallels in Shakespeare’s
text with contemporary Soviet society:
The fundamental motive of the production could perhaps be formulated as such: Romeo
and Juliet is not a play about love, not a poem about love, and not a portrayal of two
overly lofty and delicate souls without a place on our crude and vile planet. Romeo and
Juliet is a play about the struggle for love, about the struggle for the right to love by
young, strong, and progressive people fighting with feudal traditions and feudal opinions
about marriage and family. The entire play is alive and imbued with the unifying breath
of struggle and passion, making it, perhaps, the most Komsomol of all of Shakespeare’s
plays.97
The Komsomol, the Communist Youth League,98 was the social and political arm
of the Communist Party for youth ages 14-28. Established by Lenin in 1918, the
Komsomol played a vital role in securing support for Bolshevik rule during the civil war
96
Quoted in Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970 (London: Barrie and
Jenkins, 1972), 110.
97
Sergei Radlov, “Iunost’ Teatra,” Teatr i Dramaturgiia 27 (June 1936), 23.
98
Komsomol is an acronym derived from Kommunisticheskii Soiuz Molodiozhi, literally the Communist
Union of Youth but traditionally translated as the Communist Youth League.
53
following the October revolution. Lenin quickly understood that the future of the Party
lie in the proper education of its youth. During its first 50 years the Komsomol was
responsible for the political training of over 100 million Soviet youth.99 In the late 1920s,
the entire organization was declared a shock brigade for the first of Stalin’s 5-year plans
(1929-1932). The Komsomol built power stations, railroads, and factories, helped with
agricultural collectivization, and aided in the dissemination of pro-Soviet propaganda.100
It was in this atmosphere of pro-youth fervor and the acknowledgement of their role in
building a an ideal Soviet future that Radlov declared Romeo and Juliet to be a
Komsomol drama, thus making it politically useful and relevant, and compliant with the
ideals of Socialist Realism. In a review aptly entitled “The Optimistic Shakespeare,”
Adrian Piotrovsky gave his views of Radlov’s Konsomol interpretation of Romeo and
Juliet:
[Radlov’s] production clearly divides the different types of youth. On one side is the
sullen, feudal Tybalt and the feudal-lyric Paris. Revealing the color of the great optimism
of youth are the cheery friends of Romeo, Benvolio and especially Mercutio.
This is a novel about two entirely different lands with the thick blood and strong will of
young people endeavoring to struggle against the dying old-fashioned feudal ethics for
the right to happiness and love.101
The essence of Radlov’s interpretation and the rationale behind labeling the play
as Komsomol, then, is the idealization of the role of youth in forming a new and better
world. In this version, Romeo and Juliet’s death is not a tragedy, they sacrificed their
lives for the greater cause.
99
B. A. Balashov and V.V. Lutskii, “Komsomol,” Bol'shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia: A Translation of
the Third Edition, ed. A. M. Prokhorov, vol. 5 (New York: Macmillian, 1973) 232.
100
Balashov and Lutskii, “Komsomol,” 235.
101
Adrian Piotrovskii, “Optimisticheskii Shekspir: ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’ v teatre-studii p/r S. E. Radlova”
(Sovetskoe iskusstvo (Moscow) 23 May 1934) 2.
54
Radlov was aided in his interpretation of Romeo and Juliet as a Komsomol drama
by a new translation prepared by his wife, Anna Radlova. One of the challenges of
working with literature in a foreign language is finding an appropriate translation. Within
the boundaries of meaning set forth by the author, it is possible in any translation to stress
a number of different aspects. It is possible to do a literal translation, for example,
ignoring poetic details such as rhyme and meter. Another variant is to change word
choice and imagery to preserve rhyme and meter. What is not possible, however, is to
create a translation that captures all aspects of the original. Translation, then, can have a
profound effect on interpretation and meaning. By using his wife’s translation, which
emphasized the youth and vitality of the main characters, Radlov was better able to
support his socialist realist view of Romeo and Juliet as a Konsomol drama. This
emphasis, then, spilled over into Radlov and Prokofiev’s 1935 ballet Romeo and Juliet,
where the idea of youth paving the way to the future is taken one step further, by ending
the ballet happily, with Romeo and Juliet living to lead the way themselves.
Russian Imperial Grand Ballet and Marius Petipa
Another influential factor that shaped Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, was various
styles of ballet, especially the Petipa-era Russian Imperial Grand Ballet, Sergei
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the concept of choreo-drama championed by Boris
Asafiev. Both Prokofiev and Radlov worked with some of the best-known names in
avant-garde theater in Russia in the first years of the twentieth century, and many of the
55
ideas they encountered were influential in their creation of Romeo and Juliet in 1935.
Both men were also acquainted with a number of innovators in the dance world, and
these connections also helped shape Romeo and Juliet.
By the early 1900s, European-style ballet had been established as a staple of
Russian court life. Dance was formally introduced to the Russian court in the first years
of the eighteenth century by Peter the Great, as part of his attempts to westernize the
Russian nobility. In the mid-1700’s, Catherine II formally created the Imperial Theater
System and established the Imperial Theater School.102 At the turn of the twentieth
century, ballet in Russia was synonymous with the work of choreographer Marius Petipa
(1818-1910). Petipa, a Frenchman by birth, came to Russia in 1847 as premier danseur
and occasional ballet master for the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg. He became
Chief Choreographer in 1869, a post he held until his retirement in 1903.103 During his
tenure in St. Petersburg, Petipa staged over 75 ballets and the dances for 36 opera
productions. Most of these works and those crafted in imitation of Petipa's style bear the
description “Grand Ballet.”104 The grand ballet style as developed by Petipa was highly
formulaic in terms of narrative unfolding, scene structure, and dance. Usually in four
acts with upwards of nine scenes, these ballets were notable for their complex narrative
structures and visual spectacle.105
102
Tim Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet (New York:
Routledge, 1994), 2.
103
Vera M. Krasovskaia, “Marius Petipa,” International Encyclopedia of Dance: A project of Dance
Perspectives Foundation, Inc., ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen, vol. 5 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 157.
104
In Russian, Bol’shoi balet, from the French designation Ballet à Grand Spectacle.
105
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 4.
56
In Petipa-era ballets, the ballerina was the center of a production, with the leading
male character regulated to a secondary role, “a consort but never a king.”106 This
emphasis on the ballerina rather than the leading male character was a change of focus
from earlier French romantic ballets, caused primarily by the introduction of pointe
technique. At first used as a novelty, dancing sur les pointes became a staple of the
ballerina’s technique in both solo and ensemble work after it was introduced in France in
the second half of the nineteenth century. The male hero had dominated the ballet stage
in earlier centuries, but by the 1890s, his role was to physically support the ballerina as
she executed increasingly difficult leaps, turns and poses.107
The ballet historian Tim Scholl viewed the emphasis on the ballerina and the
standardized plot structure found in Petipa’s ballets as stemming from a portrayal of
“theatricalized” female sacrifice. According to Scholl, the focus is on the central female
character:
The typical Petipa work has a mad scene, a vision scene, and a scene of reconciliation in
which the male protagonist and heroine are rejoined — with each scene slightly adapted
to the new narrative exigencies. [...] Ultimately, the structure, rather than the themes of
the romantic ballet proved most important for Petipa, as the literal or metaphorical death
of the heroine became less significant than the narrative structure it determined.108
The mad scene signified the conclusion of the opening narrative scenes and the
transition from reality to the fantastic scene that followed. The vision scene, referred to
as the ballet blanc, consisted of a divertissement for the female soloists and corps de
106
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 12.
107
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 12-13.
108
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 6-7.
57
ballet. The final resolution was a set of triumphal divertissements, usually with a series
of national and character dances.109 Although Petipa introduced these features to Russian
ballet, they were not his innovations, but rather common French practices of the time.
As might be inferred from the relationship between the ballerina and the male
hero, ballet in Russia during Petipa’s era followed a strict hierarchy, reflecting the larger
court-based society of which it was a part. At the top of the pyramid was the
choreographer, whose artistic vision reigned supreme. The emphasis was on the
presentation of awe-inspiring spectacle. Little effort was given to coordinating the
different elements of ballet. Scenery and costumes had no direct link to the action on
stage, and often were reused in several different productions. Music and plot as well
were seen as subservient to the overall structure-driven format.
Prokofiev, when adapting Romeo and Juliet for the ballet stage, seemed to reject
most elements of the Petipa-era formula as described above, but he retained some
important elements as well. First of all was the overall form of the ballet. Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet contained five acts with twenty-four scenes. Following Petipa’s model
that shaped the expectations of the time, Prokofiev modified Shakespeare’s structure, and
the ballet was constructed in four acts with nine scenes.
Most Petipa-era ballets conclude the first act by featuring the ballerina in a mad
scene. Juliet does have such a scene, when she refuses her parents’ demand to marry
Paris, but this takes place in Act III, scene 1, much later in the ballet than called for in the
typical Petipa-era work. There is no equivalent of the fantasy scene typical in the grand
ballet tradition as described by Scholl in Romeo and Juliet. There is, however, a
109
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 7.
58
reconciliation scene, the happy ending where Romeo arrives before Juliet’s death.
Missing, though, are the triumphal divertissements, with their national and character
dances. In general, Romeo and Juliet are given equal narrative importance by Prokofiev
in 1935; the character of Romeo does much more dramatically than merely support Juliet
from the background.
Lavrovsky’s alterations for the 1940 Kirov production, especially in the balcony
scene, returned the emphasis, in part, to the ballerina dancing the role of Juliet. As will
be discussed in Chapter 6, many of Lavrovsky’s changes reflected a return to elements of
the typical Petipa-era ballet. This idea of music being subservient to the plot was rejected
by Prokofiev and Radlov, but re-instated by the more conservative Lavrovsky.
Lavrovsky’s changes were a source of much tension between the two men. Prokofiev
was used to and expected to be treated as an equal, whereas Lavrovsky was raised in the
tradition where the choreographer’s vision was the rule.
Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes
One of the most powerful influences on Prokofiev as a ballet composer was the
innovations and experiments of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Diaghilev took a
special interest in Prokofiev, wanting to make him one of the Ballets Russes composers,
along with Stravinsky. Diaghilev referred to Prokofiev as his second son (the first was
Stravinsky), and when he felt Prokofiev was straying as a composer, he asked Stravinsky
to take him under his wing.110 Diaghilev commissioned four ballets from Prokofiev, Ala
110
Harlow Robinson, Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998),
64.
59
and Lolly (1914-15), which was never staged, The Buffoon (1915, rev. 1920), Stal’noi
Skok [The Steel Step] (1925-6), and The Prodigal Son (1928-9). Although Romeo and
Juliet is a four-act ballet in the style of the Petipa-era grand ballet, at the same time it
contains many influences from Prokofiev’s association with the Ballets Russes.
By 1905, ballet as an art form in Russia was considered to be stagnant and
formulaic, suffering from a “leadership crisis and artistic malaise” following the so-called
“Golden Age” of ballet in the 1890’s under Petipa’s leadership.111 Petipa had been
forced into retirement in 1903, leaving an artistic void that remained unfilled. The
Feburary 1905 uprising in Russia began as a workers’ protest, but soon spread to nearly
all levels of society. Artists and musicians joined in the fray: among the protests was a
dancers’ strike at the Mariinsky Theater. The Mariinsky strike and other acts of revolt
served as a catalyst for the immense stylistic changes that took place in the arts during the
first two decades of the twentieth century. Diaghilev formed the company that would
become the Ballets Russes in the aftermath of the strike. The demands of the striking
dancers included salary increases, a shorter work week, a voice in management, and the
right to choose their own company managers.112 Many dancers were frustrated with the
status quo, and wanted the freedom to explore ideas that would become the hallmarks of
the Ballets Russes, especially the cooperation and interaction between the different
elements of ballet production.
Several of the student leaders of the 1905 dancers’ strike, most notably Michel
Fokine, Anna Pavlova, and Tamara Karsavina, would later become stars in the West as
111
112
Lynn Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4.
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 4.
60
members of the Ballets Russes. The strike divided the company of the Imperial Ballet
into dissidents and management loyalists. Despite an official amnesty, a few of the strike
leaders were dismissed, one was sent to a psychiatric hospital, others received stern
warnings, and were denied promotions or leading roles.113 These dancers began to seek
foreign engagements, resulting in a large proportion of the Mariinsky’s rising young stars
leaving the company and finding fame elsewhere.
One of the first to leave the Mariinsky and strike out on his own was the dancer
and choreographer Michel Fokine. An adherent to the principles of naturalism, Fokine
rebelled against what he saw as the stale conventions of the Petipa repertory. In his
Memoirs of a Ballet Master, he wrote:
When I played a ‘mime’ role, I represented an authentic image of the period. But when I
danced a “classic” part, I portrayed a leading dancer — outside the confines of place or
time . . . I felt that, the more historically authentic were the costumes of the mimes, the
more idiotic we, the classic dancers, must have appeared in the midst of them . . . in pink
tights and short skirts looking like open umbrellas.114
During Petipa’s tenure at the Imperial Ballet, it had become traditional to
conclude the final act of a ballet with a set of national and character dances.115 The
character dance was a means of expressing historical particularity and a sense of
exoticism. By the turn of the century, these dances had become highly stylized, their
inspiration stemming from classical dance rather than national or folk tradition. The
critic Alexander Shiryaev noted:
113
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 5.
114
Michel Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, trans. Vitale Fokine, ed. Anatole Chujoy (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1961), 118. Quoted in Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 8.
115
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 7.
61
A follower of the classic ballets, Petipa went to the character dance from them, and not
from folk dances. . . . No matter how externally brilliant and effective the character
dances of Petipa may have been, it would be more correct to consider them classical
variations on some national theme than actual national dances, even in a purely theatrical
sense.116
In his quest for authenticity that eventually led to his choreographic masterpieces
for Diaghilev’s troupe, Fokine became an avid scholar of history, the visual arts and
music. He traveled extensively and absorbed impressions of cultures past and present,
noting their separate means of expression:
Just as life differs in different epochs, and gestures differ among human beings, so the
dance which expresses life must vary. The Egyptian of the time of the Pharaohs was very
different from the Marquis of the eighteenth century. The ardent Spaniard and the
phlegmatic dweller in the north not only speak different languages, but use different
gestures. These are not invented. They are created by life itself.117
Fokine abandoned the traditional national and character dances and applied his
theories about national dance to his choreography. He started using traditional dance
rather than classical movement as his source of inspiration, creating what came to be
known as the genre nouveau:118
The genre nouveau differed from character dance both in its fidelity to historical sources
and in its overt emotionalism. But it also departed from its predecessor in another way.
Implicit in Fokine’s ethnographic method was a respect for human diversity and the
multiplicity of cultural expression — the belief that in the best of all possible worlds
pluralism would reign. . . . Here, Russia’s vast and growing empire, and the Pan-Slavic
ideology that supported it, found ready theatrical expression.119
Thus, slowly, the Petipa-era formulas were broken down and replaced.
116
Quoted in Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 11.
117
Quoted in Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 9.
118
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 11.
119
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 13.
62
One of the hallmarks of the Ballets Russes was the cooperation and interaction
between the different aspects of ballet production, rather than the strict hierarchies of the
Petipa years. The roots of this cooperation stem from the late 1890s, before the dancers’
strike of 1905. In the late 1890s, a small group of St. Petersburg intellectuals began
publishing the journal Mir iskusstva (The World of Art). The journal’s founder and editor
was Sergei Diaghilev, the future impresario of the Ballets Russes. Modest in its
beginnings in 1898, the journal became the forefront of the artistic avant-garde in Russia
until its demise in 1904. Other members of Mir iskusstva group, including the painters
Alexander Benois and Léon Bakst, would continue working with Diaghilev and become
the artistic core of the Ballets Russes.
In 1899, Diaghilev was appointed as an assistant to Prince Sergei Volkonsky, the
newly-appointed Director of the Imperial Theaters. Working with his Mir iskusstva
colleagues, Diaghilev took over as editor of the Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters. The
group turned what had been a modest review of the year’s events into a collectors’
edition known for its variety, quality and technical perfection.120 In 1901, buoyed by
their success with the yearbook, the group next tackled a dream project of Benois, the
“perfect” staging of Léo Delibes’ ballet Sylvia.121 Despite Volkonsky’s initial support,
the participation of so many “outsiders” to the Imperial Theater in the project became a
problem. Volkonsky asked Diaghilev to officially resign from the Sylvia project: he
could continue with the production, but the administration of the theater would receive
the public credit, not Diaghilev’s group. Diaghilev refused these conditions and would
120
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 165.
121
Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 44.
63
not consider any type of compromise. He was summarily dismissed from the Imperial
Theater by Tsar Nicholas II, and permanently barred from employment in any
government service.122
Though Sylvia never reached the stage, the planned production was an important
precursor to the Ballets Russes. Artistically, Sylvia set the pattern for the synthesis of
production elements that became a vanguard of Ballet Russes “style.” Diaghilev’s
banishment from the official theater system forced the group to take their enterprise
abroad, eventually bringing scores of Russian dancers with them.
After Diaghilev’s dismissal, other members of the Mir iskusstva group continued
their work in St. Petersburg. Alexander Benois and Léon Bakst continued to receive
commissions from the Imperial Theater as set and costume designers. In 1907, Fokine
and Benois worked together on a Mariinsky Theater production of Nikolai Tcheripnin’s
ballet Le Pavillon d’Armide.123 Though officially barred from state service, Diaghilev
himself continued to mount art exhibitions and theater productions in Russia and in
Europe until 1909 under the patronage of Grand Duke Vladimir, the President of the
Imperial Academy of Arts.
In 1909 the Ballets Russes broke its remaining financial ties to Russia and
established itself in Paris as an independent company. The enterprise’s first ballet
production was a revival of the 1907 Le Pavillon d’Armide production which first
introduced Fokine to the group. For the next several years, the Ballets Russes would
122
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 167.
123
Alexander Benois, Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet, trans. Mary Britnieva (London: Putnam, 1941),
246. Quoted in Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 26.
64
define itself through the choreography of Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Leonid Massine,
the stage designs by Benois, Bakst, Nicholas Roerich, Michel Larionov, and Natalia
Goncharova and dancers such as Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, Sergei Lifar, and
others. Most of the leading composers in Russia contributed music to the early Ballets
Russes seasons, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Tcheripnin, Borodin, Glinka, and
Glazunov. Stravinsky’s music became a staple of the company with Firebird in 1910.
Starting around 1912, Diaghilev continued to work with composers in Russia, but turned
more and more to the music of European composers like Debussy, Ravel, de Falla and
Satie.
When Fokine joined the Ballets Russes in 1907, he was an innovator, breaking out
of the confines of the outdated Petipa-era formulas. By 1914, however, these innovations
had themselves turned formulaic, and Fokine left the group.124` Vaslav Nijinsky, already
a renowned dancer with the troupe, became Diaghilev’s protégé and new choreographic
star. Nijinsky created only four ballets for the group, yet these works thrust the Ballets
Russes to the forefront of modernism in dance. Nijinsky’s genius lay in his ability to
incorporate current experimental trends yet retain a distinctly individual voice. Chief
among his inspirations were the stage experiments and innovations of Vsevolod
Meyerhold, discussed earlier in this chapter.
Leonid Massine, who choreographed Prokofiev’s The Steel Step for the troupe,
began his career as a choreographer for the Ballets Russes in 1915. With Massine’s
124
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 85.
65
works, design began to overshadow other components as the unifying element of a
production. This was due in part to the addition of futurist painters Michel Larionov and
Natalia Goncharova to the Ballets Russes company:
This dramatic shift in the relationship of choreography and visual design coincided with
Massine’s apprenticeship and ripening artistry as a dance master. Unlike the vast
majority of choreographers, who create their maiden works by imitating or reacting
against choreographic models, Massine learned the rudiments of his craft from the
painter’s static images.125
The final seasons of the Ballets Russes were dominated by the creations of
Georges Balanchine. Balanchine’s name eventually became synonymous with
choreographic neoclassicism, but when he joined the Ballets Russes in 1924, he was a
confirmed modernist, bringing with him the acrobatic elements employed at the time in
the most progressive Soviet productions.126 Balanchine adopted neoclassicism with
Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète, produced in 1928. Garafolo wrote about Apollon
Musagète:
The Balanchine work fused choreographic neoclassicism with several other “classical”
ideas. One of these was idealism: the identification of art with a timeless Parnassus of
the spirit. A second was neo-orthodoxy, a major trend of the 1920s, when numerous
artists and intellectuals exchanged agnosticism for the verities of religious faith. . . . Also
present [were] the allegorical treatment of the theme and the mythological subject matter,
both of which recalled conventions of French opera-ballet, to say nothing of devices
exploited in Diaghilev’s earlier period works. These conventions survive only vestigially
in current productions of Apollo. But like the music, they stressed the “classicism” of the
original, allying Balanchine’s return to Petipa with trends extrinsic to the choreography
itself.127
Similar neoclassical ideas were explored by Balanchine in 1929 in his
choreography for Prokofiev’s The Prodigal Son.
125
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 85.
126
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 135.
127
Garafolo, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 139-40. Garafolo points out that the title Apollon Musagète was
later shortened to Apollo, and Balanchine reworked the choreography several times, so that the version
performed today differs significantly from the 1928 original (p. 140).
66
CHAPTER 3
THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS AND THE CREATION
OF ROMEO AND JULIET
Right from the beginning, Prokofiev sought out the help of a trusted group of
colleagues in creating Romeo and Juliet. As was pointed out in Chapter 2, Prokofiev’s
main collaborator was Sergei Radlov, but other people and processes helped shape the
ballet as well. This chapter shows how Prokofiev proceeded from the original idea of
writing a ballet based on Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet to the process of
composing the score in the summer of 1935.
The Romeo and Juliet Project
Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography that plans for the work that became Romeo
and Juliet began in the latter part of 1934. After spending the fall in Paris with his
family, Prokofiev arrived in Moscow at the beginning of November 1934 to work with
director Alexander Tairov on the incidental music for Tairov’s Egyptian Nights, a drama
based on the lives of Anthony and Cleopatra, culled from fragments of plays by Pushkin,
Shakespeare, and George Bernard Shaw. Prokofiev and Radlov most likely saw each
other during this time and discussed a possible collaboration on a ballet version of
67
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.128 By 1934 Prokofiev was seriously considering
returning to his homeland on a permanent basis. Since his first visit in 1927, Prokofiev
had been spending large quantities of every year in the USSR, and nearly all of his
commissions were Soviet. Egyptian Nights opened on December 14 at the Moscow
Chamber Theater, and Prokofiev returned to Paris a few days later.129
Perhaps the most complete exposition of the beginnings of Romeo and Juliet is
found in Israel Nestev’s 1973 biography of Prokofiev.130 According to Nestev, in 1934
Prokofiev was hunting around to find ideas for an opera to be staged at GATOB. He
read a number of novels. Asafiev introduced Prokofiev to Adrian Piotrovsky, who
suggested two Pushkin subjects, The Captain’s Daughter and Peter the Great’s Arab.
Prokofiev, inspired by Asafiev’s recent successes staging ballets at GATOB, began
thinking about a ballet based on Peter the Great’s Arab, but soon came to the conclusion
that it contained “too little material with which to build a big ballet.”131 Prokofiev,
Piotrovsky and Asafiev brainstormed for an appropriate subject for a multi-act ballet.
They narrowed the choice down to Pelleas and Melisande, Tristan and Isolde, and
Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev thought it over for a few days, and chose Romeo and
Juliet.132
128
Radlov noted that the two men first discussed the idea of writing a ballet based on Romeo and Juliet
when Prokofiev saw Radlov’s troupe perform his drama production of the play during their 1934 tour in
Moscow (Sergei Radlov, Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, 29 (23 June, 1935), 3).
129
Robinson, Prokofiev, p. 296.
130
Nestev, Zhizn Prokof’eva, 368-370.
131
Nestev, Zhizn Prokof’eva, 368.
132
Nestev, Zhizn Prokof’eva, 367.
68
One aspect of Nestev’s narrative is a bit puzzling. Prokofiev knew Radlov and
his work, yet according to this account, it is Piotrovsky, whom Prokofiev most likely did
not meet until this time, who introduced the two men and suggested they work together
on Romeo and Juliet. It seems unlikely that this is how it really happened, but it is not
impossible. Piotrovsky was longtime friend and colleague of Radlov’s and was aware of
Radlov’s reputation as an interpreter of Shakespeare. He was also aware that Radlov had
just staged a successful drama production of Romeo and Juliet earlier that year. Once
Shakepeare’s play had been chosen as the theme, perhaps then Radlov became a logical
choice for collaborator. Without further documentation, though, it is not possible to
establish beyond doubt how the events actually unfolded.
In Nestev’s account, Boris Asafiev was one of the masterminds behind the Romeo
and Juliet project. Even if he was not directly involved (and Nestev’s account is the only
indication that he might have been), he definitely played an important role in bringing
Prokofiev and Radlov together on the project. Radlov and Asafiev worked together many
times in the 1920s and 1930s. Asafiev was the composer for The Flames of Paris and
The Fountain of Bakchisarai, both ballets directed by Radlov at GATOB. He also had
composed the incidental music for Radlov’s 1934 drama production of Romeo and Juliet.
During these years, Asafiev and Prokofiev frequently corresponded, and Asafiev played
an important part in organizing Prokofiev’s 1927 concert tour of the USSR and in
encouraging him to return to Russia permanently.
Prokofiev himself, in his 1941 autobiography, tells us that talks were held about a
performance at the Kirov Theater. It is unclear in the statement whether or not any
official agreement was reached; we are told only that “the Kirov Theater went back on its
69
word and instead I entered into a contract with the Moscow Bolshoi Theater.”133 This has
been interpreted as an official contract by most authors, with the breaking of the contract
explained by Radlov’s departure from the theater in December 1934 in the aftermath of
the assassination of the Leningrad Party Boss, Sergei Kirov, and the eventual renaming of
GATOB in his honor.134 The actual chronology of events does not fully support this
interpretation. Radlov wrote his letter of resignation from GATOB on June 22, 1934,
nearly six months before Kirov’s assassination.135 All known materials about Romeo and
Juliet show that the idea for the project was conceived in November or December 1934,
during Prokofiev’s trip to the Soviet Union.
Unofficial negotiations for the production of a large-scale work by Prokofiev with
GATOB, now renamed the Kirov Theater, continued into the first months of 1935. In a
January 24, 1935, letter Miaskovsky wrote Prokofiev about a meeting he had with
Asafiev in which Asafiev expressed his concern that the Leningrad Theater Union was
afraid of Prokofiev and would do anything to keep his music from reaching the stage.136
Prokofiev wrote to Asafiev on February 9, 1935, asking for information about
negotiations with the director of the Kirov Theater, R. A. Shapiro, for productions of
The Gambler and Romeo and Juliet.137
133
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 75.
134
Cf. Robinson, Prokofiev, 297; Jaffé, Sergey Prokofiev, 134.
135
RNB, fond 624, no. 351. Copy of Radlov’s official letter of resignation.
136
Prokof’ev and Miaskovskii, Perepiska (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1977), 434.
137
Harlow Robinson, ed., Selected letters, 138.
70
In his autobiography, Prokofiev wrote that after plans fell through with the Kirov,
a contract was signed with the Bolshoi theater. The earliest indication of the Bolshoi’s
interest in staging the ballet is an April 9, 1935, telegram from the Bolshoi Theater
director V. Mutnikh to Piotrovsky asking him to immediately send his agreement to begin
work on the libretto for Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.138 In a June 17, 1935, statement
by Mutnikh, he announced the theater had commissioned four new works, including “the
ballet Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev.”139 Throughout the rest of 1935, there are frequent
references to Romeo and Juliet in internal GABT documents, indicating an official
agreement to stage the ballet. Satisfied that the work would be performed when
completed, Prokofiev, Radlov, and Piotrovsky began work on the scenario for Romeo and
Juliet in April 1935.
138
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2 (GABT), no. 995, l. 346. Signed and stamped copy of April 9, 1935, telegram
to Adrian Piotrovsky.
139
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2 (GABT), no. 995, l. 117. Minutes of the Repertoire Council of GABT meeting
from June 17, 1935. The other commissioned works were the operas Dekabristi by Shaporin and Revizor
by Shvedov, and the ballet Spartak by Asafiev.
71
The January 1935 Outline of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
In August 1936, Prokofiev gave an interview to the journal Teatr i Dramaturgiia
in which he discussed how he conceived of musical ideas for a stage production.140 He
qualified his statement to refer to incidental music or a soundtrack to a film, but the
process he described seems to be nearly identical to how he approached the composition
of Romeo and Juliet, as will be discussed later in this chapter and in Chapter 4:141
When I am invited to write music for a dramatic production or a film, I hardly ever agree
immediately, even if I already know the text of the play. I take 5 to 10 days in order to
“see” the production, that is to see the characteristics of the various roles, the illustration
of their emotions, the illustration of events. Simultaneously with this thinking, important
themes usually suggest themselves. When I say “yes,” then, I usually have the main
thematic material already in my head and, therefore, the starting point for the work is
already established.142
Though the interview was given nearly a year after the composition of Romeo and
Juliet, it underscores the relationship that Prokofiev saw between the various types of
narrative genres. He was very careful to distinguish between music for a ballet or an
opera on the one hand, and incidental music for a play or a movie soundtrack on the
other. To Prokofiev, the difference between these two types of composition seemed to
lay primarily in the sophistication level and expectations of the audience:
In an opera or a ballet performance or a symphonic concert, the listeners come with the
specific wish to hear music, while it is of no interest to a spectator at a dramatic
performance whether or not music accompanies the stage presentation.143
140
Sergei Prokofiev, “Izuchaite tekst, teatr, orkestr: Beseda c S. S. Prokof’evym” (Teatr i Dramaturgiia 41,
August 1936) 489-91.
141
One aspect of this interview that needs to be pointed out is that Prokofiev presented himself as a veteran
composer of film scores and incidental music, when at the time of the interview he had written only one
film score, completed only one set of incidental music, and had just recently been commissioned to write
music for two productions commemorating the centennial of Pushkin’s death.
142
Prokofiev, “Izuchaite tekst, teatr, orkestr,” 489.
143
Prokofiev, “Izuchaite tekst, teatr, orkestr,” 489.
72
The audience expectations differed, according Prokofiev, by the specific genre of
the production. To Prokofiev himself, though, the role of music seemed to serve a similar
function regardless of genre: it illustrated and enhanced the narrative presented on the
stage.
The earliest-known material regarding Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet is an
outline of Shakespeare’s play written out in Prokofiev’s handwriting in January 1935.144
This document, which has only recently been discovered in the Serge Prokofiev Archive
in London, seems to be the result of Prokofiev’s attempts to familiarize himself with
Romeo and Juliet as he described in the 1936 interview discussed above. As part of his
initial process of picturing in his mind what a ballet production of Romeo and Juliet
might look like, Prokofiev condensed Shakespeare’s play down to what the composer
considered to be the bare essentials. Included were the traits for each of the roles, the
expression of their emotions and an outline of the primary events in the play. From this,
according to the August 1936 interview, Prokofiev most likely began to “see” how he
would portray each character musically.
Prokofiev’s outline of Shakespeare’s play is a two-page hand-written document in
two distinct sections, the first section in English, and the second in Russian. In the upper
right-hand corner of the first page, Prokofiev wrote in Russian “January 1935: Content of
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare.”145 This phrase, as well as the rest of the Russian text
in the outline, is written in Prokofiev’s characteristic shorthand style. Throughout his
144
SPA, Notebook 27 (January-June 1935). Photocopy. Dated January 1935 in Prokofiev’s hand. This is
the first discussion of this document in a scholarly document.
145
“Ianv, 1935. Soderzhan Rom i Dzh. Shekspira.” This phrase is much lighter than the rest of the
document, indicating that Prokofiev wrote it in pencil on the original.
73
life, he would leave out most of the vowels when writing in Russian. He used this “style”
for nearly all of his handwritten work, including librettos, professional letters and letters
to friends. Only when typing or writing in languages other than Russian, did Prokofiev
consistently write out every word in full.
An examination of Prokofiev’s January 1935 outline is revealing in that it shows
Prokofiev’s thought processes as he considered turning Romeo and Juliet from a stage
tragedy into a ballet. The first page of the outline is written on staff paper and includes
Acts I, II, and III of Shakespeare’s play (see Figure 3.1, Act I from the January 1935
outline). The title of each scene is written in English, followed by a short synopsis in
Russian. The second page includes Acts IV and V, and is written on unlined legal-size
paper. The title and the synopsis of each scene for these two acts are written in Russian.
The distinct differences in paper type and style and language indicate that Prokofiev most
likely wrote the two pages at two different times. Only the first page is dated, so there is
no way to know whether the difference in time was a matter of days or a matter of
months.
From Prokofiev’s renditions of characters’ names in Russian, it seems that he was
most likely working directly from an English text rather than from a Russian translation.
This is easily seen when comparing Prokofiev’s use of names to the forms used in the
translations available in 1934. For example, Prokofiev used the literal transliteration
‘Ledi Kapulet,’ while Shchepkina-Kupernik used the Italian ‘Sin’ora Kapuletti.’ and
Radlova used the Russian ‘Gospozha Kapulet.’ While it is possible that Prokofiev had
access to a different translation (at least five others were published in the 1800s),
Shchepkina-Kupernik’s and Radlova’s were the most readily available at the time.
74
Figure 3.1: Act I from a 1935 outline of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Prokofiev’s
hand. In the upper right hand corner, Prokofiev dated the document Jan. 1935, and
labeled it as the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (in abbreviated Russian:
“Soderzhan Rom i Dzh Shekspira”). SPA, Notebook 27 (January-June 1935).
75
Prokofiev’s 1935 score of Romeo and Juliet deviates from Shakespeare’s text in
several places, but none of these changes are in the January 1935 outline: it is merely
Prokofiev’s synopsis of Shakespeare’s text. The changes made to the play in order to
transform it into a viable ballet were added later, most likely in collaboration with Radlov
and Piotrovsky. Prokofiev’s descriptions in the outline are short and concise, without
much detail (see Figure 3.2, Translation of the January outline). The sketchiness of the
document and the frequency of incomplete sentences and thoughts indicate that Prokofiev
probably prepared this outline for his own use.
In the January 1935 outline, a document most likely intended to develop ideas for
writing an appropriate musical setting, music is mentioned only twice, in Act IV, scene 4
announcing the arrival of the bridegroom, and in Act IV, scene 5, where the wedding
music has turned to a funeral dirge. This is in stark contrast to the compositional plan
written four months later, where musical character is noted for nearly every number. The
emphasis in the January 1935 outline was primarily on the unfolding of narrative events.
It is interesting to point out, however, that already in this pre-compositional state,
Prokofiev was beginning to “see” in sound how he would portray certain scenes, and this,
according to the 1936 interview, was what he needed to say “yes” to a project.
76
77
78
The May 1935 Compositional Plan of Romeo and Juliet
Prokofiev returned to Moscow in March 1935, after a two-month stay in Paris,
and remained in the Soviet Union through the fall of 1935.146 In April he traveled to
Leningrad to work with Radlov and Piotrovsky on Romeo and Juliet. These meetings
resulted in a 4-page compositional plan for the ballet in Prokofiev’s handwriting, dated
“Leningrad, May 16, 1935.”147 It is this plan that Prokofiev used as his guide as he
composed the ballet in the summer of 1935. Prokofiev wrote out this plan for his own
use, and the elements he used in the document, such as pre-compositional timings, reflect
what I hope to show was his typical approach for composing a ballet score. Prokofiev
wrote the majority of the plan in purple and black ink. Later revisions to the plan were
made with various colored pencils, and in a few instances, different colored ink.
The May 1935 plan seems to have been written at several different sittings. This
is most clearly seen by the pen color of what I will refer to as the primary layer, the layer
that was most likely completed before Prokofiev sat down to compose. This layer
includes the sequential numbering of each movement, the description of the primary
action in the movement, some general musical characteristic, and most astonishingly, the
precise length of the movement in minutes and seconds. The date, the title and the first
scene of the primary layer for Act I are in purple ink. Prokofiev switched to black ink in
the middle of this first page for the primary layer for scene 2 of Act I. The primary layer
of all of Act II and the heading for Act III is written in purple ink. The primary layer of
146
Though Prokofiev spent most of 1935 in the Soviet Union, his family was still in Paris. The family gave
up their Paris apartment and “officially” moved to the USSR in May 1936.
147
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 66, l. 1
79
the two scenes of Act II are in black ink, and the primary layer of Act IV, which begins in
the middle of the last page of the four-page document, switches back to the purple ink.
Though the pen color of this layer varies, the numbering is consistent, implying that
Prokofiev wrote it from start to finish, then went back and began making changes.
One of the changes in the later layers of the plan is the segmentation of individual
movements. As he composed, Prokofiev revised the plan in a number of places. He
added one new movement, combined what was planned as two separate movements into
one, split what was one movement into two, and deleted a planned movement. After he
made these changes, he crossed out the old sequential numbers and wrote in the new ones
in pencil. The original plan called for 58 musical numbers; the revised version has a total
of 56. Beside each of the revised numbers, Prokofiev wrote in a big X in red pencil, the
significance of which he explained in a July 8, 1935, letter to Vera Alpers:
All in all there are 58 numbers . . . and for me there is no greater pleasure that to make a
cross next to a completed number (a black cross if the music is conceived in principle, a
red cross when the number is composed and written down). 148
Also in pencil, Prokofiev inserted comments about the character of the music and
even wrote in a few short musical fragments (see Figure 3.3, facsimile reproduction of
Act IV of the May 1935 plan, and Figure 3.4, translation of the entire May 1935 plan).
Four elements can be found in this draft. First, the general character for each
musical number is described in a few words. Secondly, key dramatic points are outlined.
Thirdly, musical characteristics are noted, and finally, timings are notated for each
musical number. For example, general characteristics are given as in number 4: “Quarrel
between the servants. Not very impetuous.” And Number 5: “Fight. Impetuous.” In
148
RNB, Fond 1201, no. 160. Letter from Prokofiev to Vera Alpers, July 8, 1935.
80
Figure 3.3: Act IV (the “Happy Ending”) of Romeo and Juliet from the May 1935
Compositional Plan (in Prokofiev’s shorthand Russian). RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no.
66, l. 2 r.
81
82
83
84
Number 5, too, there is a description of an important dramatic moment: “At the end: the
Prince enters, the fighting stops”. In other places, the verbal descriptions relate to the
character of the music as well, as in Number 8: “Servants, heavy scherzo”, Number 10:
“Arrival of the guests. Minuet? Slow, not dance-like”, and Number 11: “Entrance of
Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio a) March b) 8 measures of Romeo, thoughtful.”
A unique component of this draft that is discussed further in Chapter 4, is the
inclusion of precise timings. This is remarkable, considering that this is primarily a precompositional plan. For each musical number Prokofiev gave an approximate timing, in
minutes and seconds, and in some instances, as in number 12, sections within a number
are given these timings as well.
A comparison of the May 1935 plan with the January 1935 outline shows a
number of differences, all of them changes necessary in order to transform a play into a
ballet. Shakespeare’s play contains a brief prologue and five acts, with each act divided
into a number of scenes, varying from three scenes in Act V to six scenes in Act II. For
the ballet version of Romeo and Juliet, the structure is rearranged into an introduction and
four acts. As in the original play, the acts are divided into scenes, but in the ballet, there
are only nine scenes all together. These scenes are further divided into fifty-eight (later
revised to fifty-six) individual numbers, each containing just one or two dramatic or
descriptive events. As described in Chapter 1, Prokofiev’s rearrangement of
Shakespeare’s scene structure into four acts with nine scenes corresponded with the
expected form of the imperial grand ballet style on the Russian stage as established by
Marius Petipa. Since there was no spoken dialogue to help the audience understand the
85
narrative flow, as there is in a drama production, Prokofiev and Radlov chose to have
each musical number concentrate on just one or two key events, portrayed by dance, so
the audience could follow the story.
The most significant changes made by Prokofiev, Radlov, Piotrovsky and
Zakharov in transforming Shakespeare’s play into a viable ballet are those that occur in
the ballet’s Act IV. Instead of the “traditional” ending where Romeo and Juliet both die,
the collaborators instead changed the timing of events in the fourth act so that Romeo
arrives before Juliet awakes, thereby avoiding the double suicide.
The ramifications of the decision to re-write Shakespeare will be addressed
further in Chapter 5. Here the discussion will focus on why the collaborators decided to
have the ballet end happily. In his 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev stated that in writing
Romeo and Juliet, he wanted a “lyrical” topic. It is not known precisely what Prokofiev
meant by the use of this word, but most likely it referred to the type of story to be told.
By his choice of the word “lyrical,” Prokofiev most likely meant a topic that would fit
into the guidelines of Socialist Realism, as discussed in Chapter 2.
Audience expectations also may have been a reason for including a happy ending.
In press reviews about the happy ending of Romeo and Juliet, it was pointed out that
audiences attending a ballet expect to leave the theater uplifted, not depressed.149 This
was in part required by the tenets of Socialist Realism, where the primary function of the
149
Kut, Sovetskoe Isskustvo, 29 January 1936. This interview is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.
86
arts is to uplift and inspire the Soviet people. The happy ending, then, was necessary for
the transformation from play to ballet, since a ballet, especially a Soviet ballet, could not
be expected to end with death.
Prokofiev himself talks about one more reason for the happy ending. As he
pointed out in his autobiography, “Living people can dance, the dead cannot dance lying
down.”150 In a genre where dance is the focal point, it does make sense to consider an
ending in which the two principal characters are alive and can express themselves
through dance.
Most likely, though, the happy ending was an extension of the “komsomol”
themes so important to Radlov in his 1934 drama production of Romeo and Juliet, and
discussed in Chapter 2. In that production, the death of Romeo and Juliet was not a
tragedy; it instead served to show society the errors of the old ways and propel it forward
into a new era. Equating this with the Soviet youth movement served to underscore the
parallels with current society, where the youth would show the way to the new Soviet era.
By re-writing Shakespeare, the librettists of the ballet were able to eliminate the tragedy
of Shakespeare’s play and end the ballet triumphantly, with youth leading the parade to
the utopia of the new age.
The May 1935 plan, then, reflects sketches for many aspects of the ballet and
shows the distinct influence of Prokofiev’s collaborators, Sergei Radlov and Andrei
Piotrovsky. In the August 1936 interview referred to earlier in the chapter, Prokofiev
discussed his ideal collaboration with stage or film directors. Prokofiev stated that he
150
Prokofiev, Autobiography, 75.
87
wanted guidance, he wanted to understand the director and the vision for the final project,
so that the music could be integrated seamlessly with the other elements of the
production:
I love it when the playwright or the director can give me concrete requirements for
exactly the kind of music they want. It helps me when they say “I need a minute and a
quarter of music here,” or “give me sad and tender music here.” These requirements are
important to me, because that way I know what a non-musician wants in a particular
instance, or, more precisely, since many of our playwrights and directors understand
music excellently, what, in general, the author of the production wants from the music
suitable for a particular moment. After that it is easier for me to compose music, than if a
director or playwright is silent and I must approach music only from the point of view of
a professional musician. In other words, in the first case, there appears to be a more
multifaceted view of the situation, and of course one does not need to fear that difficulties
might appear in reconciling my point of view with the point of view of the playwright or
director, if to some degree our views are divergent.151
All of this is to say that to compose in these genres, Prokofiev needed a “visual”
emotional image as an impulse for the music.
The materials surviving from the early history of Romeo and Juliet, especially the
May 1935 plan, hint that after he wrote the January 1935 outline and agreed to compose
music for the ballet, guidelines similar to what Prokofiev described in 1936 were
established. The professional relationship between Prokofiev and Radlov appears to have
been a comfortable and productive one. As discussed in Chapter 2, Romeo and Juliet was
not the first time the two men worked together, nor would it be the last. In 1938, three
years after Romeo and Juliet, the two men again worked together on a well-received
dramatic production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Although there is no known
documentation of Prokofiev and Radlov’s working relationship for the creation of Romeo
and Juliet, it can be assumed that the process was similar to that described for Hamlet.
151
Prokofiev, “Izuchaite tekst, teatr, orkestr,” 489.
88
As shown by an eight-page handwritten letter from Radlov to Prokofiev about the music
needed for Hamlet, read in light of Prokofiev’s own words about what he wanted from a
director, their collaboration was a good one. Radlov described in great detail how he saw
each role, what he thought the inner motives of each character were, and how he wanted
to portray that character musically. 152 He suggested the mood and character for each
musical theme, and described how he wanted to use it. Several of the musical themes, for
example, Radlov wanted to repeat three or four times, altering the orchestration to fit the
shifting moods onstage. At the end of each long description, Radlov added timings for
the section in brackets.153 Also telling is Radlov’s closing paragraph: “For the realization
of this task, miraculous craftsmanship is needed, of course, but I am certain that
Prokofiev possesses it.”154 One can imagine a similar process for Romeo and Juliet,
resulting in the May 1935 compositional plan.
Prokofiev’s own recollections about Hamlet underscore both what Prokofiev
wanted from a director, and the comfortable relationship between himself and Radlov:
My method of working on music for a dramatic production consists of obtaining from the
director what he wishes for from the music for the production, then fighting with him
about my wishes, and finally, from the reconciliation after the fight, making a definitive
conclusion about what kind of music should be written.
For the production of Hamlet, only the first section of these events took place, because
Sergei Ernestovich Radlov, at my request, set forth his wishes in a quite detailed letter.
These wishes so much coincided with my own, that all that remained was to settle only a
few small details, then write the music.155
152
RNB, Fond 625, no. 346. Undated letter to S. S. Prokofiev.
153
RNB, Fond 625, no. 346, l. 2. Section 1, for example, has the notation: “The duration of this number:
maximum, to the meeting of the son with his father, 1 3/4 minutes.” There are 6 sections, or numbers, in
Radlov’s letter.
154
RNB, Fond 625, no. 346, l. 8.
155
Sergei Prokofiev, “O muzyke k Gamlety Shekspira [On the music to Shakespeare’s Hamlet],” S. S.
Prokof’ev: Materialy, Documenty, Vospominaniia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Muzykal’noe Izdatel’stvo,
1961), 101.
89
Sergei Radlov was Prokofiev’s primary collaborator for Romeo and Juliet, but he
was not the only one. Adrian Piotrovsky’s name appears on most published editions of
Romeo and Juliet as a co-librettist, though the extent of his contribution is not entirely
known. Piotrovsky was a lifelong friend and colleague of Radlov’s, as was discussed in
Chapter 2. They frequently worked together for productions in Radlov’s studio theater,
and as a theater critic, Piotrovsky frequently wrote about Radlov’s work in major journals
such as Sovetskoe Iskusstvo and Teatr i Dramaturgiia. Piotrovsky worked on other ballet
libretti, including Shostakovich’s ill-fated ballet, The Limpid Stream.156 Piotrovsky
worked in the literature department of GATOB in Leningrad, a post he held at least until
mid-1936. According to Prokofiev’s autobiography, Romeo and Juliet was first intended
for production at GATOB in St. Petersburg. By late 1934, when both Radlov and
Prokofiev date the first ideas for the ballet, Radlov was no longer working at GATOB,
but Piotrovsky was. Perhaps Piotrovsky’s involvement as co-librettist was partially to
make sure of a current connection with the theater to help facilitate a production. When
plans at GATOB fell through and a commission to produce the ballet at the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow had been secured, Piotrovsky was included as a librettist on the
project. A telegram dated April 9, 1935, from the GABT director V. Mutnykh, to
Piotrovsky requested Piotrovsky to “immediately send your agreement to start work right
156
The history of The Limpid Stream and the official denouncement of Shostakovich’s music in 1936 will
be discussed further in Chapter 5.
90
away on the libretto of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.”157 Beyond this, and a few brief
mentions of Piotrovsky as a co-librettist in press articles from late 1935 and early 1936,
Piotrovsky’s association with the ballet is undocumented.
In a June 23, 1935 article in Sovetskoe Iskusstvo about Prokofiev’s new ballet,
Radlov talked about a quartet of collaborators for Romeo and Juliet: “Sergei Prokofiev,
the composer of the ballet, Adrian Piotrovsky, my co-author of the libretto, ballet master
Rostislav Zakharov, with whom I hope to stage the proposed production, and myself.”158
Prokofiev noted in his autobiography, “In the Spring of 1935 Radlov and I worked out a
scenario, carefully consulting with a ballet master on all technical questions.”159 The
ballet master consulted was most likely Rostislav Zakharov. As discussed in Chapter 2,
Zakharov was a former student of Radlov’s and in 1934, Zakharov was the choreographer
for Radlov’s production of The Fountain of Bakchisarai. It would not be at all surprising
if Radlov suggested Zakharov as the ballet master for Romeo and Juliet. What is not
known, though, is to what extent Zakharov was involved in the project: Was he a casual
consultant or an active contributor?
In a 1962 article, Galina Dobrovolskaia determined for the first time that work
began on the scenario for Romeo and Juliet in late 1934, “according to Zakharov’s
memoirs concerning his meeting with Prokofiev in Leningrad, organized at the initiation
of Radlov. There the timings for the production were determined, and the character of
157
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 995, l. 346.
158
Sergei Radlov, “Balet Romeo i Dzhul’etta,” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo 29 (23 June, 1935), 3.
159
Shlifshtein, ed., S. S. Prokof’ev: Materialy, 75.
91
the music for every number was discussed.”160 This passage contains a number of items
that need to be commented on further, but for now, the focus is the role of Zakharov in
1934 and 1935. Dobrovolskaia made no further mention of Zakharov in her article,
except to point out that Zakharov was the ballet master for the 1943 production of
Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella. Her point seems to have been to show that Zakharov was
involved on some level with the creation of Romeo and Juliet and that it must have been
a positive experience, since Prokofiev and Zakharov worked together again on another
ballet. In 1962, this was completely new information. It changed nothing, though, about
how scholars discussed or thought about Romeo and Juliet. Even the most
comprehensive biography of Prokofiev, Nestev’s 1973 The Life of Sergei Prokofiev,
mentions Zakharov only in association with Cinderella.
Nearly 35 years later, the Russian musicologist Svetlana Petukhova continued
Dobrovolskaia’s line of thought, and suggested in her 1997 doctoral dissertation on
Romeo and Juliet that the role of Zakharov has been severely underestimated. Petukhova
contended that Zakharov was an equal partner in the collaboration and most likely
completed a full choreographic plan for Romeo and Juliet.161 She came to this
160
G. Dobrovol’skaia, "Iz Istorii Sozdaniia Romeo i Dzhul'etta S. S. Prokof'eva: Kompozitor v Rabote nad
Dramaturgiei Baleta [From the History of Composition of Romeo and Juliet by S. S. Prokofiev: The
Composer at Work on the Dramaturgy of the Ballet]," Muzyka Sovetskogo Baleta: Sbornik Statei
(Moscow: Muzyka, 1962), 239.
161
S. A. Petukhova, “Pervaia Avtorskaia Redaktsiia Baleta Prokof’eva Romeo i Dzhul’etta,” Ph.D. diss.,
Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, 1997.
92
conclusion by reading between the lines of both Zakharov’s memoir as described by
Dobrovolskaia, and Prokofiev’s statement about consultations with a ballet master in his
autobiography.
Zakharov’s comments, in full, as they were published in 1954, help us to clarify
his actual role in the creation of Romeo and Juliet:
In 1935 Sergei Prokofiev planned the ballet Romeo and Juliet. The ballet was
commissioned from Prokofiev by the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR, and I was invited to
be the future ballet master and to stage the production. Together with Prokofiev we
discussed the compositional plan of the ballet, its dances and scenes, and the timings for
each individual number.
But I did not get to stage the new production, since the director of the Bolshoi Theater
rejected Prokofiev’s music. Four years later it was staged at the Leningrad Theater of
Opera and Ballet named for Kirov with L. Lavrovsky as the ballet master.162
According to these memoirs, then, Zakharov was indeed the ballet master
mentioned by Prokofiev in his autobiography. The section also hints, with the use of the
phrase “future ballet master,” that Zakharov did not complete the task of choreographing
the ballet, that his role was that of consultant rather than co-creator.
Further clarifying Zakharov’s role is a signed copy of a letter dated September 5,
1935, in the archives of the Bolshoi Theater, from the Bolshoi Theater administration to
Zakharov in Leningrad. The letter is an official invitation to Zakharov to come to
Moscow to stage Romeo and Juliet, with a planned premiere for the second half of the
up-coming season. It informed Zakharov that if he wished to accept the invitation, he
must negotiate with the director of GATOB to release him from his contract in
Leningrad.163 A few days earlier, on September 1, 1935, Prokofiev had sent a postcard
162
R. V. Zakharov, Iskusstvo Baletmeistera (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1954), 177-178. Emphasis mine.
163
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 978, l. 136.
93
from Moscow to Radlov about progress on Romeo and Juliet, which confirmed the
choice of Zakharov for choreographer. The note reads: “Today was a hearing of [the
first] three acts. Mutnykh confirmed his wish to stage it in the Spring. They started
negotiations with Zakharov. It looks as though the stage designer will be
Khodasevich.”164
Since these two items are the last known documents associating Zakharov with
Romeo and Juliet, it seems that he did not receive permission from GATOB to break his
current contract; moreover, on January 29, 1936, a short notice appeared in Sovetskoe
Iskusstvo, announcing that P. Gusev had been appointed ballet master for the upcoming
production of Romeo and Juliet, and the stage designer would be V. Khodasevich.165 As
a footnote, the Bolshoi archives include a contract signed by Zakharov in June 1936,
bringing him to Moscow to work at the Bolshoi on a permanent basis, but this was at
least two months after plans to stage Romeo and Juliet were dropped.166 Therefore,
Zakharov revealed only part of the story in his memoirs. Zakharov stated that he was not
the ballet master for Romeo and Juliet because the planned production of the ballet at the
Bolshoi Theater did not take place. What Zakharov failed to say, however, was that by
the time the production plans for the ballet were canceled, Zakharov had already been
replaced by Gusev as the intended ballet master.
164
165
166
SPA, Notebook 28 (July-December 1935). Photocopy. Dated 1 September 1935 in Prokofiev’s hand.
Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, 29 January 1936, 4
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 1052, l. 139.
94
Perhaps the full story and the extent of Zakharov’s involvement with the first
version of Romeo and Juliet will never be known, but from the information provided by
Radlov, Prokofiev, Zakharov, the January 29, 1935 press release, and the Bolshoi Theater
archival material, a few of the pieces can be put together. It can be surmised that Radlov
wished Zakharov to work on Romeo and Juliet as the ballet master. He had worked with
him in the past and knew what he could do. At Radlov’s initiation, Prokofiev and
Zakharov met in Leningrad and discussed items such as the musical character and the
timings for individual numbers of the planned ballet. In the fall, while Radlov was out of
town, Prokofiev finalized arrangements for a Spring 1936 production of Romeo and
Juliet which resulted in Zakharov being officially invited to work on the production.
Most likely Zakharov was unable to break his contract with GATOB in Leningrad at the
time, and the Bolshoi appointed Gusev to take Zakharov’s place.
Composition of the 1935 Piano Score of Romeo and Juliet
The summer of 1935 was a busy and ultimately productive one for Prokofiev.
Soon after completing the May 1935 compositional plan, he took up residence at the
Bolshoi Theater retreat of Polenovo, located near the village of Tarussa, south of
Moscow, on the Oka River. During the four months he spent there, he completed the
entire piano score of Romeo and Juliet, as well as the Violin Concerto no. 2, two
symphonic suites, two opuses for piano, and an album for children.167
167
Robinson, Prokofiev, 305.
95
These few months were pivotal in the events that would bring Prokofiev back to
the USSR permanently. Documents in the Bolshoi Theater archives, as well as a letter
from Prokofiev to the Bolshoi Theater indicate that the theater administration was
instrumental in obtaining passports and possibly housing for Prokofiev and his family,
because of Prokofiev’s commission from the Bolshoi to compose Romeo and Juliet. The
earliest of these documents is a June 1935 letter from the Bolshoi administration to the
Foreign Department of the Moscow Regional Government, asking for a passport for Lina,
so she could travel to France while he remained in the USSR to work on Romeo and
Juliet:
The composer S. S. Prokofiev is working on composing the music for a ballet
commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater. It is essential that S. S. Prokofiev manage his
affairs in Paris, where he has lived for several years and where his children are located.
In connection with the aforementioned work, S. S. Prokofiev is not able to travel to Paris
at this time. The Administration of GABT of the USSR petitions for issuing a passport
— valid until June 15 — for his wife, Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva.168
On September 1, 1935, Prokofiev wrote a letter to Vladimir Ivanovich Mutnykh,
the director of the Bolshoi Theater, complaining about having to live in a hotel and
asking for the theater’s help in obtaining an apartment in Moscow:
My large-scale work on a ballet for the Bolshoi makes me address you with a request to
help me with an apartment in Moscow. I live with my family in a hotel, and it does not
give me the quiet necessary for my work, not to mention the excessively unmanageable
expenses. After finishing the ballet, I will begin a large-scale cantata for the twentieth
anniversary of the Soviet state, by commission from the Radio Committee, and for this I
also need to have suitable conditions for my work.169
168
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 982, l. 19. Letter dated June 5, 1935.
169
SPA, Notebook 28, June-December 1935. Letter dated September 1, 1935.
96
Although I was unable to find a specific request from the Bolshoi Theater for an
apartment for Prokofiev, it is possible that the theater did intervene on his behalf, since
Prokofiev and his family received an apartment in central Moscow in May 1936.170
In September 1935, the theater administration requested a passport for Prokofiev
so he could leave the USSR for a month-long concert tour in November. In December
1935, a request from the theater was submitted for another passport so Prokofiev could
complete the second leg of the concert tour:
The administration of GABT requests the issue of a foreign passport for the composer S.
S. Prokofiev, who is currently working on a composition commissioned by GABT.171
The composer S. S. Prokofiev in November of this year traveled abroad on a concert tour.
In connection with the composition of a ballet, which Prokofiev is working on
commission from the director of the Bolshoi Theater, he has interrupted his concert tour
and arrived in Moscow. So that S. S. Prokofiev, no later than January 20, 1936, can
again travel abroad for the end of his concert tour, the administration requests that you
issue him a new foreign passport.172
The actual composition of the music for Romeo and Juliet took place during the
summer and early fall of 1935, at Polenovo. Prokofiev finished the piano score,
consisting of fifty-six musical numbers, on September 8, 1935, and immediately began
orchestrating the ballet.
From all accounts, especially his own, Prokofiev’s stay at Polenovo was a
particularly peaceful and productive time. His letters to friends and colleagues are
optimistic and jocular. Prokofiev described his surroundings and his daily routine while
composing the ballet in a July 8, 1935, letter to Vera Alpers:
170
Robinson, Prokofiev, 313.
171
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 982, l. 39.
172
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 982, l. 68.
97
The retreat is very pleasant, the surroundings are picturesque, and all of the inhabitants
have some kind of connection to the Bolshoi Theater. There are 150 people in 5
buildings, but I have a completely separate little cottage with a terrace on the bank of the
Oka. And I enjoy the quiet and peacefulness of being out of earshot from the others. I
swim in the Oka, play tennis and chess, go on walks in the forest with our ballerinas, read
a little, and for about five hours a day, I sit and work.173
To the composer Vernon Duke, he wrote:
I’m spending the summer at an estate that belongs to the Bolshoi Theater, near
Serpukhov. It’s a marvelous little spot, a bit noisy when 3/4 of the Bolshoi Theater
troupe comes here on vacation, but it’s actually fun, especially since I have a separate
little cottage with a Blüthner and a terrace overlooking the Oka River, where it is very
quiet and conducive to good work. Lina Ivanovna and the children also came here in
August; everyone made a great fuss over the boys and spoiled them to pieces. Now all
the opera and ballet people have gone away, and I’m sitting over the score up to eight
hours a day. Besides the ballet, I have written a Second Violin Concerto, two symphonic
suites, two opuses for piano (one of them is called Thoughts), and an album for
children.174
The following letter to his friend Ephraim F. Gottlieb, an insurance agent in
Chicago, seems to refer to one of several press releases about Romeo and Juliet that were
published in various places during the summer of 1935:
From the enclosed article you will see in which way I am busy. This work takes
practically all my time, therefore please excuse the briefness of my letter. In order to
finish this ballet in time I will not go to Paris - it is Mrs. Prokofiev who will make the
journey so as to bring here the boys for the second half of the summer. Meanwhile I will
stay at the estate of the Grand Theater where artists and people connected with this
theater are taking their vacations. It is a beautiful place on the river Oka. I will have
there a tiny bungalow (a kind of izba) with a piano, so that nobody will disturb me
there.175
In August, Prokofiev left Polenovo briefly for a concert tour. From Baku, he
wrote Lawrence Creath Ammons, a Christian Scientist and friend of the Prokofiev family
in Paris:
Thank you for your card from England. L[ina] and the children left Paris on July 31 and
arrived safely to Moscow, but I could see them only for 36 hours as I had to go to the
173
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 982, l. 68.
174
Sergei Prokofiev, Selected letters of Sergei Prokofiev, trans. and ed. Harlow Robinson (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1998), 135.
175
SPA, Notebook 28, June 6, 1935. Written in English.
98
Caucasus for concerts. Health is all right and Romeo and Juliet is coming out splendidly.
During the 35 days of my wife's absence (which I spent in a most charming country place
near Moscow) there was not a single day when I have not composed something.
Heartiest greetings to Mrs. Ammons and to yourself from SP176
As we can see, even before Prokofiev began composing Romeo and Juliet, he was
actively promoting the new ballet. Besides the letters to friends mentioned above,
Prokofiev contacted at least one publisher about Romeo and Juliet. In an April 1935
telegram from Moscow, Prokofiev wrote Antonini Corat in Paris about a French
publication: “To you I propose a French translation of my new ballet. I will finish the
composition in six months.”177
Word about the new ballet traveled quickly, and Prokofiev was contacted by
colleagues from all over, offering to help bring Romeo and Juliet to performance. The
first of these offers came from A. Rimsky-Korsakov, most likely the son of Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov, one of Prokofiev’s former teachers:
I am sending you my revision of Romeo and Juliet, which is just a first version of the
ballet scenario. You know very well that any libretto can be completely changed in the
process of working with the director and the composer. I ask you to take this into
consideration while evaluating the text of the scenario that I propose to you.178
Prokofiev seems to have rejected this proposal, inexplicably scrawling at the
bottom of the letter, “no relation to the composer’s family.”179
In June 1935, in response to Prokofiev’s letter from the beginning of the month,
Ephraim Gottlieb offered to help get a performance of Romeo and Juliet in New York
City:
176
SPA, Notebook 28, Aug 9, 1935. Written in English.
177
SPA, Notebook 27, April 24, 1935. Written in French.
178
SPA, Notebook 27, April 15, 1935.
179
SPA, Notebook 27, April 15, 1935.
99
I am extremely happy of the fact that the Bolshoi Theater of Moscow has commissioned
you to write a new ballet on Romeo and Juliet. They couldn’t have chosen a more
capable man than you. Send me a copy of it and I will submit it to my friend Edward
Johnson who is at present at the head of the Metropolitan Opera Company, as I am
anxious that this great American Opera House should give the American premier of the
Romeo and Juliet ballet.180
Gottlieb received a letter from Prokofiev in November 1935, but no mention of
Romeo and Juliet was made, even though the ballet was scheduled to be premiered in
early 1936 at the time. Gottlieb made one more attempt to get a copy of the ballet in
December 1935.
I was hoping to receive word from you regarding your new ballet Romeo and Juliet. You
didn’t comply with my request in sending me a copy of it. As stated in my letter, I was
anxious to show this to Mr. Edward Johnson, who is at the present time General Manager
of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Therefore, please send it as soon as it is
published.181
Prokofiev received another offer from the Universal-Edition A. G. publishing
company concerning rights to American performances of a suite from the ballet as well as
publication of Romeo and Juliet in Europe, America, and Russia.182 These proposals
seem especially ironic in retrospect, since despite them, Romeo and Juliet was not staged
until the Brno, Czechoslovakia State Opera House production premiered in December
1938.
180
SPA, Notebook 28, December 5, 1935. Written in English.
181
SPA, Notebook 28, December 5, 1935. Written in English.
182
SPA, Notebook 28, September 12, 1935. Written in German.
100
CHAPTER 4
THE COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS: BLOCKS OF TIME
The most striking element of the sketches and draft scores for Romeo and Juliet is
the detail of musical timings present in even the earliest scenario sketch, as described in
Chapter 3. This attention to matters of time and timing had been a concern of Prokofiev’s
from the beginning of his career as a ballet composer. Despite the variety in musical
styles before and after his return to the Soviet Union, Prokofiev’s compositional
procedures in creating his ballets seem to have been remarkably consistent. As early as
1915, in the manuscript of The Buffoon, Prokofiev noted the timing in minutes and
seconds of several sections of the ballet. These timing do not seem to be precompositional, but they do show Prokofiev’s preoccupation with the control of time as a
basis of narrative structure. As is shown in this chapter, three of the six Prokofiev ballets
written before Romeo and Juliet, Trapeze, The Steel Step, and On the Dnepr, have
detailed pre-compositional plans in Prokofiev’s hand.183 In each of these plans, musical
numbers are described by the dramatic or descriptive character of the on-stage action, the
type of music needed, and an approximate timing for the number. Taking into
consideration the preliminary, draft nature of the rest of the information in these plans,
183
The three ballets for which pre-compositional timings have not been found are Ala and Lolli, The
Buffoon, and The Prodigal Son.
101
the precision of the timings is remarkable. These timings also appear at the end of nearly
every number in his various musical manuscripts, including those ballets for which precompositional sketches have yet to be found. This chapter will discuss Prokofiev’s
compositional procedures and his unique approach to musical montage, which I call
“blocks of time,” which sprang from his concern with time and timings in narrative
genres.
Prokofiev’s Early Ballets and Pre-Compositional Timings
From the time he was a child, Prokofiev showed an affinity for theatrical genres
that he would pursue his entire career. His first and greatest love was the opera, though
his struggle to gain the recognition he craved as an opera composer met with limited
success. Prokofiev was known for his shrewd business sense, and opera was the only
large-scale genre that he would write without first securing the promise of a performance.
Ballet, at least initially, held less of an attraction for the young Prokofiev. While
studying Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he
commented “I didn’t like all of those ballet-style numbers.”184 It was only after seeing
Ballets Russes performances in 1913 and meeting Diaghilev in 1914 that Prokofiev
reconsidered his dislike of ballet.
Prokofiev’s introduction to the world of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes was a heady
experience for the young composer. He had been aware of the troupe from its
beginnings; his conducting professor at the conservatory, Nicholas Tcheripnin worked
184
Sergei Prokof’ev, Avtobiografiia, 2d. ed. (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1982), 161.
102
with the group, as did Walter Nouvel and Alfred Nurok, champions of Prokofiev’s music
at the St. Petersburg Evenings of Contemporary Music. After seeing a few Ballets Russes
performances firsthand and speaking with Stravinsky, Prokofiev realized what a
successful collaboration with Diaghilev could mean to his career. In a June 12, 1914
(Old Style), letter to his friend and fellow conservatory student Nicholai Miaskovsky,
Prokofiev gushed:
The news of the coming season of Diaghilev’s ballets is two productions: Stravinsky’s
Les Noces and my ballet. Our friends at the Evenings of Contemporary Music must have
been working on him: when Nouvel introduced me to him, Diaghilev right away started
to talk about a ballet. I tried in vain to switch the topic to opera and The Gambler, but
nothing came of it. He didn’t like Maddalena’s libretto. So, I am waiting for the libretto
of a new ballet on a Russian theme. A draft of the piano score is due at the end of
November and the complete score in March. However Nijinsky, who will be doing the
choreography, may go off to America for Christmas, in which case he would not have
enough time to stage the dances and work with the dancers. That is why there is an
option to postpone the new ballet until the 1916 season. For 1915 we could make a ballet
based on an orchestral arrangement of a suite of some of my piano pieces, which I would
orchestrate in the winter. Finally, there is a third option, very typical of Diaghilev — to
use my Second Concerto, which sends him into rapture. But as a last resort I am ready for
the third alternative, since it would launch me on a dazzling career as a pianist. In a day
or two Nijinksy will be coming here and the three of us will decide what to do.185
Miaskovsky was less impressed. In a return letter he expressed his opinion of
ballet as a frivolous and inferior art: “It does not please me at all that you have become
enamored with balletomania.”186
The libretto for the new ballet, to be called Ala and Lolli, was written by the poet
Sergei Gorodetsky. Boris Romanov, a dancer and choreographer with the Mariinsky
Theater and frequent performer with the Ballets Russes, helped with the libretto and
choreographic advice. The setting was the Scythian Empire which flourished in what is
185
Harlow Robinson, ed., Selected letters of Sergei Prokofiev, trans. Harlow Robinson (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1998), 237-8.
186
Sergei Prokof’ev and Nikolai Miaskovskii, Perepiska (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1977) 135.
103
now southern Russian around 400 BCE, then mysteriously disappeared. Prokofiev
reported in his autobiography that “Gorodetsky had dug up a few good Scythian
characters but could not think up a dramaturgical plot, and it was only after many
meetings that we put together some sort of story.”187 For Prokofiev, this process was
very difficult:
At nine o’clock I was at Gorodetsky’s. From the first word, I was convinced the he had
absolutely no dramaturgical imagination. He thinks of ballet only as a picture rather than
as action. My first request, that the action begin with the raising of the curtain, was
forgotten.188
In 1914, working on his first ballet, Prokofiev already “saw” a completed
production in his mind before he began composing, the process he described in the 1936
interview discussed in Chapter 3, and was frustrated that Gorodetsky did not work the
same way.
Prokofiev played his score for The Buffoon in 1914, for Nurok and Nouvel of the
St. Petersburg Evenings of Contemporary Music, who quickly reported to Diaghilev that
“Prokofiev was turning out some weird stuff on a weird subject.”189 Diaghilev, as well,
was less than pleased with Prokofiev’s score, calling it too derivative of Stravinsky’s The
Rite of Spring and Firebird, also set in the pagan Slavic past. Diaghilev had Prokofiev
come to Italy immediately, where he gently suggested that Prokofiev forget about Ala
and Lolli, and commissioned him for a new ballet instead, which would eventually
187
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 33.
188
Sergei Prokofiev, Dnevnik: 1907-1918 (Paris: sprkfv, 2002), 512. Diary entry for October 11, 1914
(Old Style).
189
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 33.
104
become The Buffoon. Although Diaghilev was diplomatic and supportive when dealing
directly with Prokofiev, he was brutally honest in a letter to Stravinsky:
Prokofiev says he is not looking for Russian effects — it’s just music in general. It
certainly is music in general, and very bad music at that. He is gifted, but what can you
expect of him if the most cultured man he associates with is Tcherepnin, who impresses
him with his avant-gardism? I’ll bring him to see you. He must change totally, otherwise
we will lose him forever.190
Prokofiev, though, saw no reason to throw away what he saw as perfectly good
music, and arranged the score from ballet into the four-movement Scythian Suite. The
suite, premiered in 1916, received mixed reviews, but was a popular success and was
frequently performed in Russia and Europe throughout the early 1920s. No sketches of
any type survive for Ala and Lolli. Most likely Prokofiev left these materials in Russia
when he left in 1918, and they were lost in the war.
Prokofiev’s first ballet to reach the stage, The Buffoon, was commissioned by
Diaghilev in 1915, after he rejected Prokofiev’s music for Ala and Lolli. Not wanting to
take any chances, Diaghilev himself worked with Prokofiev to create an acceptable
libretto and overall plan for the ballet. They chose a series of stories about a buffoon,
from a collection of Russian folk tales compiled by Alexander Afanasiev, and arranged
them into six scenes. With a planned 1916 premiere, Prokofiev returned to Petrograd to
compose the score.191 Because of World War I, Prokofiev was unable to travel to Europe
for rehearsals and revisions, so The Buffoon was not staged until May 1921. In early
1921, in consultation with Diaghilev, Prokofiev agreed to substantially rework The
Buffoon. He added five symphonic entr’actes and completely rewrote the finale. An
190
Quoted in Robinson, Prokofiev, 109-10.
191
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 34. St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914.
105
examination of the manuscript of the ballet reveals a number of features that can be found
in nearly all of Prokofiev’s ballet scores.192 The first feature is a high degree of
correlation between text events in the libretto and musical events in the score. In later
works this is shown in scenario sketches, but in The Buffoon, Prokofiev wrote entire lines
of text right into the manuscript. A second feature is an awareness of form, structure, and
narrative pace indicated by precise timings for each musical section. In later ballets,
these timings are worked out in the scenario draft before composition of the music. For
The Buffoon, no pre-compositional scenario is known to exist, so it cannot be proved
unconditionally that they are pre-compositional, but precise timings from 1915 are
indicated at the end of each section, as they are in all of Prokofiev’s later ballet scores.
As noted in the previous discussion, Prokofiev was very concerned with the
careful coordination of musical and narrative events in even his earliest ballets. He wrote
out detailed sketches for many of his ballets, outlining this coordination, including precompositional timings. The earliest known pre-compositional sketches with timings for a
Prokofiev ballet are those for Trapeze, composed in 1924. On a small piece of paper,
badly worn and folded into quarters, Prokofiev wrote out a preliminary outline for a
fourteen-minute ballet with five musical numbers (see Figure 4.1: Translation of Trapeze
plan).193 In pre-compositional plans for later ballets, Prokofiev indicated the approximate
timings for each individual number, but for Trapeze, he gave only the timing for the
ballet as a whole. Compared with the May 1935 plan of Romeo and Juliet, this outline is
192
The Buffoon manuscript is housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City as part of the
Lehman Deposit.
193
SPA, Notebook 3, January-June 1924.
106
Figure 4.1: Translation of pre-compositional plan for Trapeze (June 1924).
107
much more general, especially in terms of timings, but the basic elements — a
description of the on-stage events, the type of music needed and an approximate timing
— are all there.
Trapeze, a short one-act ballet, was written for the choreographer Boris Romanov,
whom Diaghilev had tapped to choreograph Ala and Lolli before canceling the ballet.
Romanov, who was now living in Berlin, commissioned what would become Trapeze for
his touring dance troupe, the Russian Romantic Theater. Prokofiev wrote a five-section
"quintet-ballet" that could also be performed as a concert piece.194 Until recently, very
little was known about Trapeze, except that it was performed in Europe several times in
1925. Because the notebooks containing a rough plan for Trapeze and Prokofiev’s
diaries that discuss the composition process have only recently been made available to
scholars, it has been assumed that Prokofiev was unaware of any plot or theme as he
wrote the work.195 According to the one-page outline of the ballet in Prokofiev’s hand,
though, the ballet was to include fourteen minutes of music in five scenes. There is no
194
Romanov later requested and received two movements of music that were not included in the concert
version of the work, the Quintet op. 39.
195
The plan itself is undated, but its placement within the chronologically-organized folder and a reference
to a meeting at the Hotel d’Lena in Paris later referred to in a dated letter from Romanov to Prokofiev,
indicate it was written in June 1924. Prokofiev’s diaries from 1907 to 1933 were published by the Serge
Prokofiev Foundation and made available to scholars for the first time in October 2002. The November
2002 issue of Three Oranges Journal, also published by the Serge Prokofiev Foundation, contains an
article about the creation of Trapeze by Noelle Mann that draws on Prokofiev’s diary entries and material
in the Serge Prokofiev Archive (Noelle Mann, “Trapéze: A Forgotten Ballet by Serge Prokofiev and Boris
Romanov,” Three Oranges Journal, 4 (November 2002), 7-14. Mann has discovered that Trapeze was
actually a re-working of a 1913-14 Romanov ballet called What Happened to the Ballerina, the Chinamen,
and the Tumblers and discusses the plot in her article (Mann, “Trapéze,” 11).
108
story line indicated in the plan, but Prokofiev noted the character of the music needed,
including a theme and variations for the solo ballerina, and some action highlights
including a duel and mourning over the dead ballerina.196
In many ways foreshadowing the difficulties Prokofiev and Lavrovsky would
encounter during rehearsals for the 1940 Kirov Theater production of Romeo and Juliet,
Prokofiev and Romanov ended up with serious disagreements about Romanov’s staging
of the ballet. In March 1925, Prokofiev played the music for Trapeze for Romanov for
the first time. Romanov was complimentary, but asked Prokofiev to reorganize some of
the movements because he had changed his mind about the scenario.197 Prokofiev
complied, but complained in his diary:
I composed this work following the instructions of the written scenario and it was not
easy for me to write the final part, having had to submit myself to that plan. And now,
“please be good enough to change.” But I will not change the concert Quintet because of
the integrity of the tonal organization.198
In late September of 1925, Romanov asked Prokofiev to authorize him to remove
twenty-seven measures from the first section of the ballet.199 Prokofiev reluctantly
agreed, but a few weeks later he wrote Romanov, vehemently objecting to all of the
changes Romanov had requested:
The more I think of the way your staged the Overture, the clearer it becomes to me that it
is not right. When you showed it to me last Sunday, I thought that, with time, I might get
used to it, but in fact it is the opposite. Your fault lies in the fact that in the summer you
explained your plan to me in great detail. I composed the music strictly sticking to it, but
now you have completely changed the whole scene. Remember: at first there were merry
cobblers and gloomy functionaries – and the music follows this. But now it is being
196
Trapeze plan, SPA, Notebook 3, January–June 1924.
197
Mann, Trapéze, 13.
198
Quoted in Mann, Trapéze, 13.
199
Mann, Trapéze, 13.
109
played with the curtain down. I don’t like this. I want movement, I want the curtain to
rise immediately over 3 or 5 bars – I even wrote the clarinet line with this in mind. Then,
in the middle of the Overture there must be a love scene, of real tenderness, out of which
is born the drama at the end of the ballet; but now you bring out a prostitute with a
cigarette – once more in dissonance with my music. And there is a third dissonance: the
lack of movement on the stage at the end of the Overture when the music is clearly
rhythmical and skipping. I already commented on that. Think about this my dear! And
perhaps make some changes.200
The problem, in Prokofiev’s mind, was that Romanov drastically changed his
vision for the ballet after Prokofiev had finished the music, carefully coordinating with
the events on stage, as Romanov had originally described them. This is a theme that
surfaces several times in conjunction with Prokofiev’s ballets, including Romeo and
Juliet, and it emphasizes that timing was an integral part of Prokofiev’s “envisioning” the
music.
Prokofiev’s next ballet was another commission from Diaghilev and the Ballets
Russes, The Steel Step, composed in 1925-26. In an August 11, 1925 letter to Diaghilev,
Prokofiev described his progress on the ballet working with the co-librettist Georgi
Yakoulov.201 Included with the letter are the libretto for Act I, a musical plan including a
list of personnel needed, and an outline of the action for the entire ballet. The musical
plan describes eight numbers divided into a prelude, Act I and an entr’acte, each with a
brief description of the on-stage events, the character of the music, and the timing for the
number rounded to the nearest 1/2 minute (see Figure 4.2: Translation of The Steel Step
plan, prologue and act I).202
200
Quoted in Mann, Trapéze, 13.
201
SPA, Notebook 6, July-December 1925.
202
SPA, Notebook 6, July-December 1925.
110
Figure 4.2: Translation of the pre-compositional plan for Stal’noi Skok, Prologue and Act
I (August 11, 1925).
111
Diaghilev envisioned The Steel Step, to be a ballet about proletarian life in Soviet
Russia.203 The libretto was put together by Prokofiev and Georgi Yakulov, a Soviet
artist. The choreographer was Leonid Massine, who created dances in the style of 1920s
ballets about the 1917 Russian Revolution, such as Deshevov’s The Red Whirlwind, and
Gliere’s The Red Poppy. The 1920s revolutionary theme was also reflected in the
constructivist sets and costumes, also by by Yakulov. The original title of the ballet, as it
appears in the notes and sketches described above, was Ursin’ol. According to author
David Nice, Ursin’ol was Yakulov’s idea of a “Soviet”-sounding acronym, which he
derived from a combination of the French initials for the USSR [URS], and Stravinsky’s
Le Rossignol.204 The Steel Step was a critical and popular success in Europe, fascinating
audiences with its vision of proletariat life. The French reviews were mostly
complimentary, of both the music and the choreography, and it was considered the
success of the 1927 Ballets Russes season. Following the ballet’s success in Europe,
Prokofiev tried a number of times to get The Steel Step performed in the USSR, but to no
avail. Perhaps naively, Prokofiev was puzzled by the harsh Soviet criticism and rejection
of the work.
After the success of The Steel Step in Europe, Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev
to compose what would be his last work for the Ballets Russes, The Prodigal Son, written
in 1928-9. Musically and choreographically, The Prodigal Son is steeped in neoclassicism. The libretto was written by Boris Kochno, based on the New Testament
203
Sketches located in SPA, Notebook 6, July-December 1927.
204
David Nice, Prokofiev: From Russia to the West 1891-1935 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003),
215.
112
parable. The choreography was by George Balanchine. The music, as requested by
Diaghilev, was “simple, timeless and poetic.”205 Upon receiving Kochno’s scenario,
Prokofiev composed the music for the ballet very quickly. Diaghilev expressed surprise
at how fast Prokofiev had worked, but was pleased with the results. Staging the ballet did
not go as smoothly, however. Although The Prodigal Son was a popular and critical
success immediately, Prokofiev complained that Balanchine's choreography “did not fit
the music.”206 Prokofiev blamed part of the problem on his arriving at rehearsals too late
in the process to insist on changes. Again, as in Trapeze, Prokofiev wrote the music for
The Prodigal Son with a set scenario in mind, carefully coordinating the music with
planned events on stage. When he saw Balanchine’s choreography, however, Prokofiev
realized that Balanchine’s vision for the ballet was different from his, and the two men
clashed violently. No pre-compositional sketches have been found for this ballet.
Prokofiev’s final ballet written before his return to the Soviet Union was On The
Dnepr (1931), written for Serge Lifar and the Paris Opera. The pre-compositional plan,
dated January 1931 by Prokofiev, describes a twenty-seven and a half minute ballet in
two scenes and 13 numbers.207 This plan is more detailed than the plans for Trapeze and
The Steel Step, and closely resembles the May 1935 pre-compositional plan for Romeo
and Juliet. The general character is noted for each number on On The Dnepr, as in
Number 5: “Pas de deux. Not a love dance”, Number 1: “Soft-lyrical overture,” and
Number 9: “Ballerina from the Opera. Lyrical grotesque.” Key dramatic points are
205
Robinson, Prokofiev, 224.
206
Shiftstein, Materialy: Documenty, 75.
207
SPA, Notebook 24, January-June 1931.
113
outlined, as in Number 5: “He lifts her and holds the pose.” There are also descriptions of
musical material, as in Number 7: “Lifar and the men. D-major in 3/2.” Each number
for the ballet includes a short description of on-stage events, the character of the music,
and a time, rounded to the nearest 1/2 minute. (see Figure 4.3: Translation of On the
Dnepr plan).
Prokofiev worked closely on the libretto for On the Dnepr with Sergei Lifar, who
had danced the role of the Prodigal Son. Lifar also choreographed On the Dnepr and
danced the lead role. A number of materials in the Sergei Prokofiev Archive, including
scenario sketches and a pre-compositional plan with timings, show that once again,
Prokofiev carefully planned the correlation of musical and dramatic events.208
In the process of composing the five pre-Romeo and Juliet ballets, Prokofiev
worked with some of the biggest names in early twentieth-century ballet, including
Sergei Diaghilev, Boris Romanov, Sergei Lifar and George Balanchine. Although each
of these ballets explored quite different musical and stylistic territory from the others, a
number of common threads can be found. For each ballet, Prokofiev seemed to have
followed the process he outlined in the 1936 interview presented in Chapter 3, where he
had to “see” the production in his mind’s eye before he agreed to write the music. This
process of “seeing” the completed production helped Prokofiev obtain the high degree of
correlation between the music and on-stage events that permeates his ballets, operas,
incidental and film music. This tie becomes so much a part of the music itself that when a
208
SPA, Notebook 24, January-June 1931. It is interesting to note that the working title for the ballet was A
Sunday Evening.
114
Figure 4.4: Translation of pre-compositional plan for On the Dnepr (January 1931).
115
choreographer or director changed Prokofiev’s vision for a particular work after the
music was composed, he became angry and frustrated. The duration of actions, then, was
a very important element. Prokofiev carefully coordinated the timing of musical events
to correspond with the dramatic action, so when that was changed, the two elements no
longer worked together as he had envisioned. As it had in both Trapeze and The
Prodigal Son, this became the source of the disagreements between Prokofiev and
Lavrovsky for the 1940 Kirov production of Romeo and Juliet.
Pre-Compositional Timings in Romeo and Juliet
As discussed in Chapter 3, the May 1935 pre-compositional plan for Romeo and
Juliet contains timings for every number of the ballet. A comparison of timings in the
May plan to the timings in the final piano score shows an extremely high degree of
correlation between the two documents (see Figure 4.4: Comparison of May 1935 plan to
the September 1935 piano score). More than that, this degree of correlation is
astounding, especially since most of the timings in the May plan are pre-compositional.
Prokofiev inserted the duration of the completed movement at the end of fifty-one
of the fifty-six numbers in the piano score. For thirty-three of these, or 58.93 percent, the
timings correspond precisely with the timings projected in the May compositional plan,
and forty-eight numbers, or 85.71 percent, are within thirty seconds of the May timings.
The timing indicated by the marking at the end of each number in the piano score is the
actual duration of the movement, figured by counting the number of beats using
Prokofiev’s indicated tempo markings. Most of the timings in the May plan, as shown in
Chapter 3, are part of the primary, pre-compositional layer. They are written in the same
116
117
pen color as the descriptions of each number, and are connected to the descriptions by a
line (see Figure 3.3: Facsimile of May 1935 plan, p. 81). Prokofiev seemed to have
edited the plan as he composed, making changes in a different-colored pen and in pencil,
so the fact that the timings are in the same pen-color as the primary-level descriptions
indicate they were written at the same time. A few of the changes made by Prokofiev
were to the timings, as in Number 12, but a majority of the timings throughout the
document are unaltered. Another factor that shows that most of these timings are precompositional, is that there are a few instances where the two sets of timings do not
correspond, and no correction was made to the May plan, as in Number 10, “The Arrival
of the Guests.” The May plan indicates this number should be three minutes long, but the
completed number in the piano score is four minutes and thirty seconds long.
As noted in Chapter 3, Rostislav Zakharov indicated that he helped Prokofiev
determine the choreographic character and the timings for Romeo and Juliet. From this,
several scholars, including Dobrovolskaia, Petukhova and, to a certain extent, Nestev,
have assumed that the details present in the May plan, including the pre-compositional
timings, were not Prokofiev’s usual compositional method, but were the results of his
collaboration with Radlov and Zakharov. In fact, as the first part of this chapter shows, a
high degree of pre-compositional organization is a basic characteristic of Prokofiev’s
compositional method for ballet, independent of whom he was working with and dating
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as far back as 1924, in the sketches for Trapeze, if not already in The Buffoon (1915).209
Detailed pre-compositional plans, therefore, seem to be a feature of Prokofiev’s approach
to writing a ballet.
Prokofiev and Film Music
Prokofiev’s attention to timings and a high degree of pre-compositional temporal
organization is not unique to his compositions for ballet; it was also a large factor in his
effectiveness in writing music for films. Though Prokofiev would become an extremely
successful and sought-after film music composer, he initially resisted invitations to work
on film projects. The producer I. Rummel approached Prokofiev in 1932 to write music
for the film Lieutenant Kizhe. In his memoirs, Rummel recounted that “Prokofiev
categorically rejected my proposal. His time was scheduled far into the future, he had
never written music for film, and he didn’t know ‘what kind of sauce to put on it.’”210
Rummel did not give up his pursuit, and in early 1933, Prokofiev finally agreed to
compose the music for Lieutenant Kizhe. Once again, he requested information from
Rummel about “the dimensions of the musical pieces, their character and length.”211 He
explained that he was interested in “the era, the internal meaning of each event, the
209
Indications of similar characteristics can be found in the manuscript for The Buffoon (1915), but no
separate documents indicating pre-compositional intentions have been found, as was discussed earlier in
this chapter.
210
I. Rummel. “Iz Istorii Poruchika Kizhe,” Sovetskaia Muzyka, No. 11, 1964, 69.
211
Rummel, “Iz Istorii Poruchika Kizhe,” 69.
119
personality of each hero.”212 This approach is nearly identical to Prokofiev’s own
description, three years later, as to how he approached writing music for dramatic
productions and film in the August 1936 interview discussed in Chapter 3.
Usually when Prokofiev composed dramatic or film music, he was part of the
project right from its conception. Prokofiev began work on the music for Lieutenant
Kizhe, though, only after the director, Alexander Faintsimmer, had already finished the
planning and shaping of the film. Prokofiev attended the filming and, as Rummel noted,
“carefully watching, he would note down all the details, the pantomime of the actors,
their movements, and it seemed that at that moment he already knew what kind of music
he would write for this or that fragment.”213 Although the suite compiled from the
soundtrack was much more successful than the film itself, it was Lieutenant Kizhe that
established Prokofiev’s reputation as a film composer.
Prokofiev’s next film project came five years after Lieutenant Kizhe, in 1938.
Alexander Nevsky was the first of three films the composer would write with the great
Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.214 Eisenstein and Prokofiev enjoyed a close and
comfortable working relationship; it was perhaps the most successful collaboration in the
careers of both men. After the overwhelming success of Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein
wrote an hommage to Prokofiev’s compositional skill, entitled P-R-K-F-V for the
customary way Prokofiev signed his name.215 Eisenstein’s astute observations in this
212
Rummel, “Iz Istorii Poruchika Kizhe,” 69.
213
Rummel, “Iz Istorii Poruchika Kizhe,” 70.
214
The other two films were the two parts of Ivan the Terrible, in the mid 1940s.
215
Sergei Eisenstein, “PRKFV,” in Autobiography, Materials, Documents, 252-264.
120
article about Prokofiev’s approach to the task of writing music for a film further
elaborates the process described by Rummel about the composition of music for
Lieutenant Kizhe:
How does Prokofiev work out the structural and rhythmic elements of his musical
equivalent for a given film sequence?. . . The hall is dark. But not so dark that we cannot
see his hands on the arms of his chair in the light reflected from the screen. . . A picture
is being run on the screen. And with utmost precision Prokofiev’s tense fingers strike the
arm of his chair as if tapping out a message on a telegraph key. Is he beating time? No.
He is doing far more than that. His fingers are feeling out the structural pattern of
duration and tempo interwoven with action and intonation that make an integral whole of
isolated sequences.216
Eisenstein pointed out an important characteristic of Prokofiev’s music to
accompany narrative genres: his music does not merely illustrate the action on stage, it
goes further and becomes an integral part of the scene structure. Prokofiev produced the
aural embodiment of “duration and tempo” of the visual action on the screen, or on the
stage, for that matter. Even in instances like Lieutenant Kizhe, where Prokofiev began
work fairly late in the creative process, the music becomes more than a decorative
dressing. Perhaps it was the intense efforts that Prokofiev invested in writing music that
participated equally in the dramatic whole that caused him to resist so strongly when
outsiders changed or rearranged his music, as happened in 1938-9 when working with
Leonid Lavrovsky on Romeo and Juliet.217
216
Eisenstein, “PRKFV,” 258.
217
The volatile working relationship between Prokofiev and Lavrovsky is addressed in Chapter 6.
121
Blocks of Time
Eisenstein, in many of his films, including Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the
Terrible, was known for his innovative use of montage, the technique of juxtaposing two
or more images in order to express a new idea. It was used extensively in film in the
1920s and 1930s, but also in live theater. Eisenstein himself experimented with what he
called the “montage of attractions” in his stage productions. Prokofiev translated the
filmic concept of montage into musical terms using a method I have labeled “blocks of
time.” These blocks can be found in his film music and incidental music for plays, but
they are also the foundation of his ballet compositions, including Romeo and Juliet.
Prokofiev’s scores for all of these works are constructed using short “cells” of musical
material, which he then pieced together to form the individual musical numbers. These
blocks are the manifestation of Prokofiev’s concern with the coordination of music, stage
action and narrative unfolding, incorporating dramatic as well as musical information.
The blocks function as the foundation of a composition, and all other elements grow from
them.
Blocks of time have some characteristics seemingly in common with leitmotifs; in
fact, Svetlana Petukhova, in her Ph.D. dissertation on Romeo and Juliet, analyzes the
ballet in terms of leitmotifs.218 Like leitmotifs, blocks of time are reoccurring, and, in
places, associated with a particular person, place or state of mind. In most other ways,
however, blocks of time function in very different ways from leitmotifs.
218
S. A. Petukhova, “Pervaia Avtorskaia Redaktsiia Baleta Prokof’eva Romeo i Dzhul’etta,” Ph.D. diss.,
Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, 1997.
122
Leitmotifs are usually recurrent melodies or themes designed to represent or
symbolize a specific person, place, event, or state of mind in a dramatic work. Although
they may be altered on subsequent appearances, the changes are usually slight, so that
they are clearly recognizable by the listener. As we know, the term was first used in
connection with the operas of Richard Wagner, where leitmotifs were identified as a
unifying feature that provided dramatic comprehensibility and commentary, rather than
as elements of musical structure or form.219
As used by Prokofiev, however, blocks of time are the backbone of the overall
musical structure. They are how Prokofiev controlled not only the representation of a
character or event, but most of all the passage of time and movement: time shaped and
led the form of the composition, rather than visa versa, as is more commonly found in
compositional practice. Leitmotifs are by nature short, as to be easily remembered and
recognized. Blocks of time, however, are often extended sections. Leitmotifs are usually
melodically determined and controlled, while blocks of time expand and contract to fill
varying amounts of time as determined primarily by the dramatic action on stage.
Although the technique of creating a musical composition by employing
sequences of unrelated blocks of material can be found in the music of other composers,
most notably that of Igor Stravinsky, Prokofiev’s use of these blocks seems to be unique.
Unlike Stravinsky, who paid careful attention to large-scale structural proportions and
219
Arnold Whittall, “Leitmotif,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed, vol. 14, ed.
Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 443.
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events such as the golden mean,220 Prokofiev often used block structure to create
traditional forms such as ABA. The second number, “Romeo,” in Romeo and Juliet is an
example of this. Since the first number, the Overture, is typical in that it presents themes
from throughout the ballet, “Romeo” presents the first blocks of the ballet. Also typical
of Prokofiev’s structure, each rehearsal number delineates a separate block. The first
block, A, lasts thirty seconds and is characterized by pizzicato strings and an ascending
melodic line in the bassoon (see example 4.1: “Romeo,” Block A). The second block, B,
features a disjunct melody in the clarinet, lasting ten seconds (see example 4.2: “Romeo,”
Block B). The B block is then stated again, this time with the violins playing the melody.
It is twice as long in this statement, lasting for twenty seconds. The second statement of
the A block begins in measure 32. It again features pizzicato strings and an ascending
melodic line in the bassoon, but this time, the blocks lasts for only ten seconds instead of
thirty seconds. The number ends with a new ten-second long block, C, that functions as a
coda, giving the overall form for the movement as ABA coda (see example 4.3:
“Romeo,” Block C).
Prokofiev’s use of blocks to create traditional forms is often very clever, as in his
introduction of a new block, C, at the end of “Romeo,” which serves as a coda and at the
same time, as a transition to the next number. He uses this technique throughout Romeo
and Juliet, incorporating blocks of time written specifically to serve as transitions. This
can be seen in No. 9, “Preparations for the Ball,” No. 14, “Juliet’s Variation,” and in
220
Margarita Mazo explored the implications of the golden mean in Stravinsky’s Les Noces in her paper
“Stravinsky’s Svadebka and the Parisian Artistic Landscape,” American Musicological Society, Columbus,
Ohio, 2002.
124
Example 4.1: “Romeo,” Block A (Prokofiev, “Romeo and Juliet,” Sobranie Sochinenii,
vol. 9, arr. for piano by L. Atovm’ian (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1960), 15, measures 1-14).
Example 4.2: “Romeo,” Block B (Prokofiev, “Romeo and Juliet,” 15, measures 15-23).
125
Example 4.3: “Romeo,” Block C (Prokofiev, “Romeo and Juliet,” 16, measures 41-44).
many other places. Therefore blocks of time structure does not preclude transitions, but
incorporates them into the timing of an event — material is added or subtracted as needed
to fill the required length of time.
Although I am using examples from Romeo and Juliet only, blocks of time seems
to be a consistent technique of Prokofiev’s in all of his ballet compositions, and in his
film and incidental music for plays as well. The pre-compositional timings, when they
exist, and the timing indications at the end of every musical number in each of his ballets,
I believe, are Prokofiev’s marker for constructing and arranging individual blocks into
the dramatic and musical texture. Thus, in the May 1935 pre-compositional plan for
Romeo and Juliet, in No. 30, “Quarrel between Tybalt, Mercutio and Romeo,” Prokofiev
broke down the dramatic action into three section, each describing the character of the
music, with a timing for each section:
1) Tybalt and Mercutio look at each other like bulls (in the orchestra, a trill: blood boils),
the beginning of the fight. 2) Entrance of Romeo to the theme of Laurence’s cell. (30
seconds). 3) Tybalt throws down a glove, Romeo returns it. Tybalt takes a sword,
Romeo returns it, Mercutio rushes at Tybalt. 30 + 30 + 45 seconds.221
221
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 66, l. 2. See also Figure 3.4 in Chapter 3, page 82, Translation of the
May 1935 Compositional Plan.
126
Each of these thirty or forty-five second sections is treated by Prokofiev as a
separate block. As in the “Quarrel Between Tybalt, Mercutio and Romeo,” Prokofiev
does associate certain blocks with certain events, people or places, but the timing of each
reoccurrence is modified to coordinate with the action on stage.
The raw material that would become individual blocks were the notations in the
musical sketchbooks that Prokofiev carried with him constantly, noting down themes and
ideas whenever they would hit him. It was his lifelong practice to write down musical
ideas as they came to him, and then later organize them into specific compositions.
Sometimes in the sketchbooks there would be just a melody noted, but more often, an
entry would include accompaniment and even meter.222 Thus, for example, when
Prokofiev decided he needed a heavy dance, for No. 12, “Dance of the Knights,” as
labeled in the May 1935 compositional plan for Romeo and Juliet, he would turn to his
sketchbooks until he found a sketch that would work for that particular block. The
selected block would then be expanded or contracted in each appearance to fit the amount
of time needed to coordinate with the action on stage.
Blocks of time, then, are the compositional and structural tool Prokofiev utilized
to obtain the correlation he desired between musical and dramatic events. It bears
returning once more to the 1936 interview discussed earlier in the chapter and in Chapter
3. Right from the time he agreed to accept a commission for a dramatic production or
222
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 285, l. 13, 16; RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 285, l. 5, 6, 8, just as a few
examples.
127
film, it seems that Prokofiev already had in mind a number of blocks of time that he
would use to build his composition to coordinate with the visual elements of the
composition.
As one more example of what blocks of time are in the ballets of Prokofiev and
how they work, I would like to examine the balcony scene, which ends the first act of
Romeo and Juliet, in some detail. This scene will also be used in Chapter 6 to illustrate
the types of changes made by Lavrovsky for the 1940 Kirov Theater production of the
ballet (see figure 4.5: Blocks of Time analysis of Act I, scene 3, the Balcony Scene).
The Balcony Scene consists of two musical numbers, numbers 17 and 18. The libretto
indicates that No. 17 begins with an empty stage.223 Prokofiev constructed the number
using two blocks, which I have labeled A and B respectively in figure 4.5, each 40
seconds long (see example 4.4: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block A, and example
4.5: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block B). The second block begins at rehearsal
number 123, with Juliet’s entrance.224 In the 1935 piano score, at the end of No. 17,
Prokofiev noted the movement was one minute and twenty seconds long. As pointed out
earlier in the chapter, Prokofiev’s pre-compositional timings for Romeo and Juliet have a
remarkably high correspondence to the completed timings in the 1935 score, but this
number is one of the few exceptions. In the May 1935 compositional plan, Prokofiev
noted this number would be thirty seconds in duration.
223
RGALI, fond 1929, op. 1, no. 61. This is the libretto Prokofiev submitted to Lavrovsky in 1938, in
preparations for the 1940 Kirov Theater production of Romeo and Juliet. With the exception of the happy
ending, which had been replaced, this libretto follows the 1935 piano score of the ballet.
224
All rehearsal numbers referred to in this section follow Prokofiev’s own markings in the 1935 piano
score.
128
129
Example 4.4: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block A (Prokofiev, “Romeo and
Juliet,” 84, measures 1-12).
Example 4.5: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block B (Prokofiev, “Romeo and
Juliet,” 84, measures 19-29).
130
The Balcony Scene continues with no break in between the numbers 17 and 18.
No. 18 begins with a twenty-second block of material, which I have labeled C (see
example 4.6: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block C). Here, according to the
libretto, Romeo appears, Juliet is embarrassed. Musically, this block combines sections
of sixteenth-note chords with a melody that is associated with Juliet’s newly-found
awareness of her femininity, first heard in No. 9, “Juliet the Young Girl.” The love dance
proper between Romeo and Juliet begins at rehearsal number 125 in the 1935 piano
score. The dance consists of four different blocks, each delineated by Prokofiev himself
with rehearsal numbers. The first block of the dance, D, is heard twice, each time lasting
for 30 seconds (see example 4.7: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block D). The E
block is heard only once, and it, too, is thirty seconds long (see example 4.8: 1935
Balcony Scene, beginning of Block E). Prokofiev continued this symmetry with the first
presentation of block F, which is indeed thirty seconds long (see example 4.9: 1935
Balcony Scene, beginning of Block F). The block is repeated in a varied form, this time
contracted to twenty seconds. F is then heard a third time, again in its twenty-second
long contracted version. The final block of the love dance, G, is heard twice (see
example 4.10: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block G). The first presentation is
thirty seconds long, while the repetition has been contracted into a twenty-second block.
No. 18 and the Balcony Scene as a whole end with a repetition of the A material that
began No. 17, notated in quarter notes rather than eighth-notes, making it twice the
duration of its first appearance in the scene. Thus, the scene ends with the same block it
began with, bringing a sense of closure to the scene and the first act of the ballet. The
scene is through-composed, but consists of repeated blocks rather than being constructed
131
Example 4.6: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block C (Prokofiev, “Romeo and
Juliet,” 85, measures 37-44).
Example 4.7: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block D (Prokofiev, “Romeo and
Juliet,” 85, measures 51-53).
Example 4.8: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block E (Prokofiev, “Romeo and
Juliet,” 89, measures 1-6).
132
Example 4.9: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block F (Prokofiev, “Romeo and Juliet,”
90, measures 13-21).
Example 4.10: 1935 Balcony Scene, beginning of Block G (Prokofiev, “Romeo and
Juliet,” 91, measures 57-62).
133
by motivic development. No. 18, like No. 17, is an exception as far as correspondence in
timing between the May 1935 compositional plan and the 1935 piano score. In the May
plan, the number was to be three minutes long, but, as marked by Prokofiev in the score,
it is four minutes and thirty seconds long.
134
CHAPTER 5
“ALL KINDS OF MISSTEPS”: CANCELLATION OF THE BOLSHOI
THEATER PRODUCTION OF ROMEO AND JULIET
In June 1935, Prokofiev took up residence at Polenovo, the summer retreat of the
Bolshoi Theater, and began the composition of Romeo and Juliet, working from the May
1935 compositional plan. He finished the piano score on September 8, 1935, and
immediately began the process of orchestration. Although the rest of the Bolshoi Theater
personnel had returned to Moscow at the beginning of September, Prokofiev remained
behind until early October, taking advantage of the lack of distractions to work on
orchestrating the ballet.225
Throughout the summer and fall of 1935, the artistic community of Moscow was
kept abreast of the progress of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet through frequent press
releases in publications such as Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, Izvestiia, and Vecherniaia Moskva.
These progress reports created a sense of anticipation by providing details about nearly
every aspect of the creation of Romeo and Juliet, including the genesis of the idea to
adapt Shakespeare for the ballet stage, the compositional and orchestration processes, the
hiring of personnel such as the choreographer and stage designer, a number of hearings,
225
Letter to Vera Alpers, October 23, 1935.
135
the progress of the rehearsals, and the plans for a 1936 premiere at the Bolshoi Theater.
The reports were often just a sentence or two, as in the October announcement in
Vecherniaia Moskva that the score for the ballet had been completed:
The composer S. Prokofiev has finished the music for his new ballet Romeo and Juliet.
The Bolshoi Theater of the USSR will start rehearsing the ballet as soon as the score is
received from the composer.226
In January 1936, the rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet seemed to be going well.
Plans for a spring 1936 premiere were well under way, as reported in a short press release
in the January 29, 1936, issue of Sovetskoe Iskusstvo:
The production of the ballet by S. Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, at the Bolshoi Theater of
the USSR is the charge of ballet master P. Gusev. The director is S. Radlov. The stage
designer is B. Khodasevich. The premiere will take place at the end of the season.227
This, however, was the last mention of the planned 1936 Bolshoi production in
any newspaper or journal. Even the fact that Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet had been
canceled was never published. This silence seems strange, given the abundance of
information printed about the ballet up to that point. Romeo and Juliet was not staged at
the Bolshoi Theater until 1946, and it was not the Prokofiev/Radlov/Piotrovsky ballet that
was presented, but a reworked version with choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky and
many changes in Prokofiev’s score, the version which premiered in 1940 at the Kirov
Theater in Leningrad.
The only known source that addresses the cancellation in any manner is a letter to
Vera Alpers dated April 16, 1936. In it, Prokofiev did not write that the premiere was
canceled, nor did he mention any names or any reasons for this cancellation. Instead, he
226
Vecherniaia Moskva, October 5, 1935.
227
Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, etc.
136
avoided any direct references, writing only: “After all kinds of missteps with Romeo and
Juliet, I have become keen on music for children, and you should receive the results from
me soon.”228
The lack of information about the decision not to stage Romeo and Juliet in 1936
raises two major questions that have never been examined or even raised by scholars.
First, why was the production canceled, when, as of January 29, 1936, just a few months
before the scheduled premiere, everything seemed in order? Second, once the decision to
cancel the production was made, why was it not publicized, or even mentioned in private
correspondence? These questions are the topic of the remainder of this chapter.
The Undanceable Theory
In the 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev wrote that the planned 1936 Bolshoi
production was canceled because the ballet was considered to be undanceable: “During
the course of the summer the music was written, but the Bolshoi Theater found the ballet
undanceable and broke the contract.”229
The label undanceable was certainly applied to Romeo and Juliet during
rehearsals for the 1940 Soviet premiere at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad, but there is no
228
RNB, fond 1201, no. 160, Letters from Prokofiev to Vera Alpers, no. 17, April 16, 1936. Much of
Prokofiev’s correspondence is unavailable to scholars until March, 2003. Perhaps there are more detailed
letters about the cancellation included among these letters. The children’s piece Prokofiev referred to in
this letter is Peter and the Wolf, one of his most popular compositions.
229
S. I. Shlifshtein, ed., S. S. Prokof’ev: Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniia, 2d ed. (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1961), 75.
137
hard evidence that this term was ever used to describe the ballet in 1935 or 1936, or that
undanceability had anything to do with the cancellation of the 1936 production.230 In
fact, in the 1935 and 1936 press releases about Romeo and Juliet, not one referred to the
ballet as undanceable. To the contrary, nearly all of the articles praised Prokofiev’s
music for Romeo and Juliet in general, and two of them specifically addressed the score’s
inherent danceability. An unsigned article in Vecherniaia Moskva on October 15, 1935
reported, “The harmonic language [of the ballet] is rich and modern. The rhythms are
fresh and varied, and most importantly, genuinely danceable.”231 A January 1936 article
in Sovetskoe Iskusstvo stated, “The musicologist A. Ostretsov acknowledged that
Prokofiev’s music ‘completely satisfies one of the most important requirements of ballet
music: it is danceable.’”232
The statements in the press and the lack of any direct reference to the score’s
undanceability do not conclusively disprove that the ballet was considered undanceable
in 1936, but they do raise some questions. If, indeed, undanceability was a reason for the
cancellation, it would have been typical for Prokofiev to address it in his private
correspondence, especially in letters to Maiaskovsky, Alpers, and Vernon Duke, to whom
he frequently wrote about his compositions and professional endeavors. Granted, many
of Prokofiev’s letters, especially from 1936 onwards, have only recently (March 2003)
been accessible to scholars, but since the undanceability issue was discussed in the press
230
The issue of undanceability and the 1940 Kirov Theater production of Romeo and Juliet is discussed in
Chapter 6.
231
Vecherniaia Moskva, October 5, 1935.
232
A Kut, Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, No. 5 (January 29, 1936), 1.
138
and in Prokofiev’s correspondence in 1938 and 1939 in conjunction with the production
of Romeo and Juliet at the Kirov Theater in 1940, it seems unlikely that all mention of
undanceability was suppressed in 1936, and therefore, undanceability does not seem to
have been a factor in the cancellation of the 1936 Bolshoi Theater prodction of Romeo
and Juliet.
Since it seems that Romeo and Juliet was not considered “undanceable” in 1936,
the question remains as to why, in 1941, Prokofiev claimed undanceability as the primary
factor for the cancellation of the Bolshoi Theater production.
The ‘Happy Ending’ Theory
In the 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev also attributes the Bolshoi cancellation to
the outrage caused by his and Radlov’s decision to change Shakespeare’s tragedy and
give Romeo and Juliet a happy ending:
At that time there sprang up many conversations around our attempts to end Romeo and
Juliet happily: in the last act Romeo arrived a minute earlier, found Juliet alive, and
everything ended well. The reasons that pushed us into that barbarism were purely
choreographic: Living people can dance, the dead cannot dance lying down. Our
justification was that Shakespeare himself sometimes vacillated in regard to the outcome
of his works (King Lear), and at the same time he was writing Romeo and Juliet he also
wrote Two Gentleman of Verona, where everything ended well. It is interesting that in
London, it was reported as a simple establishment of fact that Prokofiev was writing a
ballet Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending, while our Shakespeare scholars proved to
be more holy than the pope himself and rushed to the defense of the vanquished
Shakespeare.233
233
S. I. Shlifshtein, ed., S. S. Prokof’ev: Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniia, 2d ed. (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1961), 75.
139
Not surprisingly, as Prokofiev pointed out, the happy ending was discussed by the
press in some detail. The outcome of these discussions, though, was not as one-sided as
Prokofiev presented it in 1941. There were a few dissenting voices, but there were also a
sizeable contingent of critics who praised the ending.
Both of the articles that came down strongest against the happy ending were
reviews of an October 4, 1935 official hearing sponsored by the Bolshoi Theater. The
critic Boris Gusman, writing for Izvestiia, praised Romeo and Juliet as the only one of
Shakespeare’s tragedies that might be successfully adapted to the ballet stage, but
questioned the revised ending:
One example is the completely bewildering attempt of the librettists (S. Radlov and A.
Piotrovsky) to attach to Shakespeare a happy ending. It wasn’t by chance that
Shakespeare built his work as a tragedy. A different ending would not be able to show the
same social situation that Shakespeare chose and that he so clearly portrayed in Romeo
and Juliet. The entire construction of the form and its development are inseparable from
its tragic ending.”234
The unidentified critic writing for Vecherniaia Moskva was also not convinced by
the happy ending played at the Bolshoi:
Contrary to Shakespeare, the young heroes do not die: submerged in sleep from the fake
poison, Juliet wakes up in time. There is general rejoicing. Juliet and Romeo happily
spin around in a pas de deux. Curtain. In the words of S. Radlov, the optimistic outcome
does not contradict the main ideas of Shakespeare: the struggle for the right to love.
However... Shakespeare nevertheless preferred to bury his heroes. The entire
development of the plot depends on the ending that gives it this or that direction. In this
particular ballet, which has the tendency to follow Shakespeare entirely, such a
“lightened” ending sounds not only unexpected, but is not organic and contradicts the
previous action.235
234
Boris Gusman, “Novy balet Prokof’eva,” Izvestiia, October 6, 1935.
235
Vecherniaia Moskva, October 5, 1935.
140
On January 25, 1935, Prokofiev played through the first three acts of the piano
score at a hearing sponsored by Sovetskoe Iskusstvo. In his write-up of the evening, the
critic A. Kut summarized the reaction of several musicologists and critics in the audience.
Although it was not played that evening, Kut devoted a large part of his article to the
happy ending:
S. Prokofiev did not play the final act of the ballet, which, on account of its ending, has
already managed to provoke a huge controversy in artistic circles and in print. It is not
possible, of course, to settle this controversy without considering the ballet as a whole.
The question is how to end the ballet: with the prosperity or with the burial of Juliet and
Romeo.236
Kut used an unattributed quote rather than the thoughts of any specific audience
members in his coverage of reactions against the happy ending:
Others spoke out strongly for retaining Shakespeare’s ending. “It would not be anything
terrible if the ballet ended with death. In the dramaturgical sense, a somber ending to the
ballet does not necessarily give a pessimistic character to the ballet as a whole. The
cheerful tone of all of Prokofiev’s works, vividly present in the high points of the ballet,
would not be weakened if the outcome of the ballet followed in the footsteps of
Shakespeare.”237
In contrast, when discussing reactions in favor of a happy ending, Kut quoted in
some detail the opinions of individual scholars:
“Whoever is against changing the ending,” said S. S. Dinamov, “does not know that
Romeo and Juliet appears in the work of at least eight authors. It is a collective work.
Personally, I am all for changing the ending. Ballet is ballet. It is necessary, so that
people leave after the ballet with pleasure. Ballet as a genre is such that it must end well.
From this comes the conclusion that the two main heroes in a Shakespearean drama by
Prokofiev must not die.”
D. O. Zaslavskii also agrees that a ballet must end “happily,” but he proceeds from
somewhat different considerations. With that, the “dramaturgically lightened” variant of
Shakespeare’s tragedy which we see in the libretto of the ballet, a happy ending to Romeo
and Juliet is indeed possible.
Also speaking out in favor of the joyful ending was O. S. Litovskii.238
236
A Kut, Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, No. 5 (January 29, 1936), 1.
237
Kut, Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, 1
238
Kut, Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, 1
141
Kut himself seemed to favor the happy ending though he did not state so
directly. As Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography, the decision to change
Shakespeare’s ending to Romeo and Juliet did cause considerable discussion, but
it is misrepresentative to say that public opinion about the happy ending was
primarily negative.
Return to the Tragic Ending
Although the happy ending of the 1935 version Romeo and Juliet does not seem
to have been the impetus behind the cancellation of the 1936 Bolshoi Theater production,
something did cause Prokofiev to rewrite the last act of the ballet and restore
Shakespeare’s tragic ending. In the 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev blamed
dissatisfaction with the happy ending to Romeo and Juliet on “our Shakespeare
scholars,”239 and credited an unnamed person’s observation as the impetus behind
changing the happy ending:
What convinced me to change my mind [about the happy ending] was something else.
Someone said: “Your music does not succeed in expressing true joy at the end.” That
was true. After several meetings with choreographers it turned out to be possible to give
the ballet a fatal outcome, and after that was born the music for that ending.240
There is evidence, however, that it was Prokofiev himself who had second
thoughts and pushed for the restoration of Shakespeare’s original ending to the ballet.
From September 1935 to January 1936, there were three hearings of Romeo and Juliet,
each performed by Prokofiev at the piano, from the piano score. At the first of these
239
S. I. Shlifshtein, ed., S. S. Prokof’ev: Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniia, 2d ed. (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1961), 75.
240
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 75.
142
hearings, held on September 1, only the first three acts were played, not because of any
misgivings about the happy ending, but because Prokofiev had yet to finish the fourth
act.241 The second, official Bolshoi Theater hearing of the ballet, including the happy
ending, was held on October 4, 1935. As discussed earlier in the chapter, the reviews of
this hearing praised Prokofiev’s music, but questioned the decision to change
Shakespeare’s ending. These reviews may have been the catalyst for the eventual return
to the tragic ending and the reference in the 1941 autobiography to outraged Soviet
scholars. A cryptic comment in a postcard hints that Prokofiev may have had misgivings
about the new ending as early as December 1935:
I’m traveling through a variety of warm places, hanging around between Arabs and
donkeys. I’m playing the exact same program all the time in order to have time to
orchestrate Romeo. In two weeks I return to Paris to get my winter coat, then directly to
Moscow. How are you? Do you remember about Romeo? Have you been pushing
yourself? Have you come up with a brilliant [genial’niy] ending?242
Prokofiev’s inquiry about the “brilliant ending” may explain why just the first
three acts of the ballet were played at the press hearing on January 25, 1936. If he had
misgivings or perhaps had already decided to remove the happy ending, it would make
sense for him not to play the fourth act. Otherwise, it seems strange that Prokofiev would
omit the final act, even though he had played it at the Bolshoi Theater hearing three
months earlier.
241
The fourth act was finished on September 7, the entire piano score was completed on September 8. The
only known record of this hearing is a copy of a postcard from Prokofiev to Radlov dated September 1,
1935: “I found your letter after I returned from my trip to the Caucasus. I plan to finish the piano score of
the ballet in the next few days. Today was a hearing of three acts. Mutnykh confirmed his desire to stage
[the ballet] this spring.” [London, Notebook 28, June-December 1935].
242
St. Petersburg Public Library Archive. Fond 625, no. 465, l. 2
143
No known sources identify either when Prokofiev decided to change the happy
ending or when the new ending to Romeo and Juliet was actually composed. It seems
that Prokofiev must have decided not to use the happy ending after he had finished the
piano score and had begun orchestrating the ballet. By this time in his career, Prokofiev
had developed a shorthand orchestration system, where, after he finished the piano score,
he would go back through and annotate instrumentation details directly into the
manuscript. In places where he needed more space, he would mark in a number using a
dark blue pencil, which referred to a separate notebook (see figure 5.1: Facsimile of
orchestration notebook for Romeo and Juliet).
Prokofiev discovered this method during his December 1925 tour of America
while he was orchestrating the ballet The Steel Step:
During the tour I did not stop working on orchestrating the ballet. Since the branches of
Pro Musica were scattered all over the States, all the way to San Francisco, several days
were spent traveling by train. I tried to use that time for orchestration. The shaking [of
the train] hindered writing, so I decided to do all of the preliminary work on the train,
deciding not only what instrument would play this melody or that accompaniment, but
scoring each measure completely, including the instrumentation of chords, bowings,
accents and nuances, creating a solid foundation, so that all that remained was the
mechanical copying into the full score of everything that was thought out and penciled
onto the piano score. At first it seemed impossible to fit all of the instrumentation details
onto the piano score, but after a little practice, I could do it without any difficulty.
Furthermore, there was always an empty line between staves to copy out additional
voices or accents. If, however, I were unable to fit it all in, I marked in a reference to a
separate page, where I copied out any interlacing or difficult string passages. For a long
time, this method served me very well.243
For Romeo and Juliet, the orchestration process took Prokofiev several months of
intense work, which he started immediately after finishing the piano score, as he wrote to
Vera Alpers in a letter dated October 23, 1935:
243
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 57-58.
144
Figure 5.1: Facsimile of orchestration notebook for Romeo and Juliet. The numbers 105
and 106 refer to the piano score manuscript. RGALI, fond 1929, op. 1, no. 61, l. 11 r.
145
After a hot and moderately pleasant trip to the Caucuses in August, I ensconced myself in
Polenova, finished composing Romeo and Juliet, and orchestrated a fair amount.
Everyone else left here in September, so there was no one to bother my work.244
Left by himself at Polenova, Prokofiev worked quickly, as he reported to
Miaskovsky:
I finished composing Romeo and immediately immersed myself in orchestration. So far,
I keep my speed of around twenty pages per day (that is, about twenty pages in Lamm’s
copy from “it”), but it is difficult. Most important is not to fall into ‘Asafiev-isms,’ that
is [into] the line of least resistance.245
As Prokofiev finished orchestrating each section, he passed the manuscript to his
copyist, the composer Pavel Lamm, who then wrote out the full score according to
Prokofiev’s directions.
Prokofiev’s orchestrational annotations in the piano score of Romeo and Juliet
stop at the end of number 51, the first number in the fourth act. The final eight measures
of 51 are crossed out, and Prokofiev has amended the timing for the number, so it reads
3:50 - :25 = 3:25. He also wrote in “from here go to the new No. 52, the death of Juliet.”
The ‘old’ No. 52 and nos. 53 through 56 comprise the happy ending. ‘Old’ No. 52 and
No. 53 are crossed out, and most telling, have no orchestrational annotations. Nos. 54, 55
and 56 are not crossed out, but they, too, have no orchestrational markings. The lack of
annotations indicates that the happy ending was undoubtedly dropped during the time
Prokofiev was orchestrating the ballet.
Dating when the new ending for the ballet was actually composed is more
difficult. Lamm kept a very detailed notebook of his work for Prokofiev. For each job
given him, Lamm listed the name of the composition, the section to be worked on, the
244
RBN, letter to Vera Alpers dated October 23, 1935.
245
Perepiska Prokof’ev and Miaskovsky, pg 440. Letter dated September 11, 1935.
146
type of work to be done, the cost per page, the number of pages completed by Lamm, the
total cost for the work done, and a notation indicating that Lamm had received payment.
Many of these entries refer to Lamm’s work on Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately, Lamm
does not provide dates for any of these transactions.246
By evidence found in Prokofiev’s correspondence with Lamm, it seems that
during the second half of 1936, when he was putting together the first two orchestral
suites from the ballet, Prokofiev was keeping his options open for the ending of Romeo
and Juliet. On August 6, 1936, after the cancellation of the Bolshoi production, Prokofiev
wrote Lamm asking him to finish certain sections that he needed for the orchestral suites
he was compiling from the ballet:
I include here Act III of Romeo (your score, my original and additional pages with
references). I ask you very much to fill the holes which I filled with the exclusion of the
mandolin part. Also, please do No. 51, i.e. the beginning of Act IV. I will need all of
this for the suite, so this is why it is better to do this work first and then continue copying
Acts I and II.247
Note that Prokofiev mentions the entire ballet, except numbers 52 through 56, the
numbers that comprise the happy ending. If he had already composed a new ending,
Prokofiev most likely would have included it in the sections for Lamm to copy. The
suites themselves also seem to skirt making any decision about the ending. The final
section of the second suite is taken from No. 51, Juliet’s Funeral, which takes place while
246
RGALI, fond 2743, op. 1, 16, l.l. 48-56.
247
RGALI, fond 2743, op. 1, 183, l. 10. Letter from Prokofiev to Lamm, August 6, 1936.
147
Juliet is under the effects of the sleeping potion. This leaves the ending of the suites
ambiguous. In any future production of the ballet, Prokofiev could end it either way
without contradicting himself.248
Therefore, Prokofiev showed he was having doubts about the happy ending as
early as December 1935. In 1936, when he compiled the orchestral suites, he left open
the possibility to end the ballet either happily or tragically in the future. Lamm’s
notebooks do not help date when the ending was re-written, but most likely it was before
April 1938, when Prokofiev send a score to the ballet to the State Theater in Brno,
Czechoslovakia, which premiered the ballet in December 1938, with a tragic ending.
Cancellation of the Bolshoi Theater Production of Romeo and Juliet
There are a number of documents in the official archives of the Bolshoi Theater
that confirm production plans for Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet at the end of 1935-36
theater season. Much of this material is signed by the director of the theater, V.
Mutnykh. The earliest of these documents is an August 21, 1935 vision statement from
Mutnykh for the theater. Near the end of this report, repertoire plans for the 1935-36
season are listed:
New Productions: S. S. Prokofiev has just about finished the piano score of Romeo and
Juliet, which is due September 1. If it is suitable, we will produce it this season.249
248
The suites and the compilation process are discussed in Chapter 6.
249
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 982, l. 63.
148
From around this same time is an undated repertoire plan for the 1935-6 season in
a collection of documents dated April 2 through September 31, 1935. Listed under the
heading “Should be received this season from authors working by contract with the
theater” are two ballets: Spartak, music by Asafiev, and Romeo and Juliet, music by
Prokofiev.250 In the same collection of documents is an undated work plan of the
repertoire department for September 1935 listing Romeo and Juliet as in preparation.251
On September 9, 1935, Mutnykh wrote the Leningrad ballet master Rostislav
Zakharov, inviting him to work on the ballet:
The Director of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater of the USSR offers you the role of
ballet master for the ballet Romeo and Juliet. The production is planned for the second
half of the current season.252
As noted in Chapter 2, Zakharov was unable to accept the position because of his
duties at the Kirov Theater.
Another undated repertoire list for the theater is sandwiched in between two
documents dated January 19, 1936 and January 20, 1936. On the reverse side, under the
heading “Plans for the 1936-37 Season,” are listed two ballets, Asafiev’s Prisoner of the
Caucases and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.253 Since there is no mention of these being
premieres, it is most likely that in mid-January 1936, the Bolshoi Theater was planning to
continue Romeo and Juliet into the next season.
250
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 995, l. 2.
251
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 995, l. 37.
252
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 978, l. 136.
253
RGALI, fond 648, op. 2, no. 988, l. 75.
149
According to the dates of the material in the theater archives, plans for the
Bolshoi Theater production of Romeo and Juliet seem to have been discarded in early
1936, some time after January 29, the date of the press release listing the ballet master as
P. Gusev and the review of the January 25 press hearing, both published in Sovetskoe
Iskusstvo. The only proof that production plans for the ballet were abandoned is the April
1936 letter from Prokofiev to Vera Alpers, discussed earlier in the chapter, where he
mentions “all kinds of missteps with Romeo and Juliet,” and the fact that Romeo and
Juliet was not staged at the Bolshoi Theater until the 1946 revival of the 1940 Kirov
production. What were these “missteps” that Prokofiev referred to in his letter? The
answer lies in an examination of other events in the Soviet Union in early 1936.
Censorship and Romeo and Juliet
On January 28, 1936, an unsigned editorial in Pravda, entitled “Muddle Instead of
Music,” shook the Soviet music world to its foundation. The article harshly criticized
Dmitrii Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District for its crudity and
vulgarity, calling it unfit for the Soviet stage.254 A week later, on February 6, 1936,
another unsigned editorial, “Ballet Falseness,” condemned Shostakovich’s ballet The
Limpid Stream, about life on a collective farm, for its ideological falsehoods. Although
Shostakovich was the only composer mentioned by name in either editorial, they were
254
The editorial “Muddle instead of Music” commented on the Western popularity of the opera, noting,
“Lady Macbeth enjoys great success with audiences abroad. Is it not because the opera is absolutely
unpolitical and confusing that they praise it? It is not explained by the fact that it tickles the perverted
tastes of the bourgeoisie with its fidgety, screaming, neurotic music?” Quoted in Boris Schwarz, Music and
Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970 (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1972), 124.
150
interpreted by the music community as a warning shot for all.255 Regional chapters of the
Composers Union throughout the USSR held meetings to discuss the editorials and their
implications. The transcripts of these meetings in Leningrad and Moscow, featuring
comments by the leading composers of the day, were published in Sovetskaya Muzyka.256
The Bolshoi Theater had been involved with productions of both of the
Shostakovich works criticized in the editorials. It was at the Bolshoi Theater, in January
1936, that Stalin himself saw Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. His negative reaction
to the opera is said to have been the catalyst for the first of the two Pravda articles.257
Even before this, in December 1935, Mutnykh, was criticized by a workers’ committee
for staging modern works such as Lady Macbeth.258 The words of a worker identified
only as Comrade Iasheumov sum up the general themes of the fourteen-page document:
It is too bad that Comrade Mutnikh has left. I wanted to say that he did not understand
us. We did not say that we do not need this opera [Lady Macbeth]. Instead we asked
why the Bolshoi Theater has gone down the path of least resistance, why does it stage
this new opera when it could be staged at the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater instead.
We workers demand productions with more value from the Bolshoi Theater than this
opera.259
255
The two articles caused an uproar in other artistic circles as well. The theater journal, Teatr i
Dramaturgiia devoted large sections of its March and April 1936 issues to responses from leaders in the
theater world, including Radlov and Meyerhold.
256
Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 124.
257
Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 123.
258
RGALI, Fond 648, op. 2, no. 1014, l. 84-97. Observations of Workers on the Opera Lady Macbeth.
259
RGALI, Fond 648, op. 2, no. 1014, l. 94.
151
The Bolshoi Theater was also planning a production of Shostakovich’s The
Limpid Stream for its 1935-36 concert season, as we know from repertoire plans in the
official documents of the Bolshoi Theater.260
The criticism of the two Shostakovich works in Pravda, the connections of these
works with the Bolshoi Theater, and the ensuing uproar caused by the Pravda editorials
undoubtedly made Mutnykh and the Bolshoi Theater administration a little nervous and
perhaps a bit cautious about releasing any new productions, such as Prokofiev’s Romeo
and Juliet, without careful political consideration first. Perhaps even more important in
complicating any future staging of Romeo and Juliet, was the fact that Adrian Piotrovsky,
one of the co-librettists for Romeo and Juliet, was also one of the librettists for
Shostakovich’s The Limpid Stream. Therefore, Romeo and Juliet became too risky to
stage at this time. Piotrovsky was connected to Shostakovich’s The Limpid Stream,
Radlov was an avant-garde director, ripe for being accused of formalism himself,261 and
Prokofiev was still considered more European than Soviet by the Stalin government,
having just committed to returning to the Soviet Union permanently, and therefore
suspect for his Western connections.
Although Prokofiev’s music came under heavy criticism from the Stalin
government in 1948, it has been widely accepted that he did not face personal censure or
direct criticism in 1936. This now seems to be untrue; it seems that the cancellation of
the Bolshoi production of Romeo and Juliet was clearly related to the aftermath of the
Lady Macbeth and The Limpid Stream articles. It is important to stress again that there
260
RGALI, Fond 648, op. 2, no. 988, l. 75.
261
Radlov, in fact, was arrested in 1945 and spent several years in prison camps.
152
are no surviving records of the cancellation of Romeo and Juliet, let alone of the reasons
behind the decision. Moreover, there are a number of pages that have been torn out of
the sections of the official archives of the Bolshoi Theater from the early months of 1936.
It is possible that some of these pages contained material relevant to the cancellation of
the ballet. The materials that are available, however, do support my hypothesis that
Romeo and Juliet was not staged at the Bolshoi Theater in 1936, as had been planned and
documented in the records of the theater, because of the atmosphere of fear and caution
caused by the aftermath of the two Pravda editorials condemning the music of
Shostakovich in January and February 1936.
Also supportive of this hypothesis is that after the January 29, 1936,
announcement about production plans for Romeo and Juliet and quite regular
representation in the journal Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, Prokofiev’s name is not mentioned
again in the journal until November 1936, and then only in a one-line mention of an upcoming musical evening with an unspecified program.
The connection between the Pravda editorials and the cancellation of the Bolshoi
Theater production of Romeo and Juliet may very well have prompted Prokofiev to write
to Vera Alpers about “all kinds of missteps with Romeo and Juliet.” This connection
might also have caused Prokofiev to continue the cover-up when he wrote his memoirs in
1941. In order to have a logical excuse for the cancellation, he most likely borrowed the
primary criticism expressed by participants in the 1940 Kirov Theater production of the
ballet and transferred it to the canceled 1936 plans.
153
CHAPTER 6
“NEVER WAS A TALE OF GREATER WOE THAN PROKOFIEV’S MUSIC FOR
ROMEO”: THE ORCHESTRAL SUITES, THE BRNO PREMIERE,
AND THE 1940 KIROV THEATER PRODUCTION OF ROMEO AND JULIET
After the cancellation of the 1936 Bolshoi Theater production of Romeo and
Juliet, Prokofiev began trying almost immediately to find a new home for his ballet, but
was unable to secure a production until 1938, at the Brno State Theater in
Czechoslovakia.262 Romeo and Juliet was not staged in the Soviet Union until January
1940. In the summer of 1936, unwilling to waste the results of nearly a year of work
creating Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev compiled two concert suites from the 1935 piano
score of the ballet.263
The first suite was premiered in Moscow on November 24, 1936, while the
second suite was premiered in Leningrad on April 15, 1937. Both suites were played
world wide soon after their premieres, including performances in Paris, New York City
262
RGALI, fond 1929, op. 1, no. 811, l. 5, letter to Prokofiev from the Kharkov State Theater, September
14, 1936, apologizing for not being able to follow through with plans to stage Romeo and Juliet at this
time.
263
A third concert suite was compiled in 1946, after the ballet had been performed a number of times.
154
and Prague. The critical reception of the suites was primarily positive, both in USSR and
abroad. Despite the favorable reception of the suites, Prokofiev was still unable to secure
a staging of Romeo and Juliet. He noted in his 1941 autobiography:
The ballet itself was unlucky: In 1937 the Leningrad Choreographic School signed a
contract to stage a production of the ballet for its 200-year jubilee, and in 1938 the Opera
Theater of Brno (Czechoslovakia) also signed a contract. The Choreographic School,
however, broke the contract and thus the premiere took place in Brno in December
1938.264
No doubt Prokofiev reasoned that the suites might work as positive advertising,
introducing the music, and therefore the ballet, to people making programming decisions
who might not otherwise be aware of it. This tactic eventually paid off, and Romeo and
Juliet was premiered by the Brno State Theater in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on December
30, 1938, although in very different form from the 1935 piano score. In the spring of
1938, Prokofiev finally obtained the promise of a Soviet production of Romeo and Juliet,
to take place at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad. The theater appointed Leonid Lavrovsky
as the choreographer, and in August 1938, Prokofiev and Lavrovsky began working
together on their plans for the ballet. That was, again, Prokofiev’s rotten luck: the two
men had very different aesthetic approaches, and the road to the eventual premiere of the
ballet at the Kirov Theater on January 11, 1940, was long and difficult.
264
S. I. Shlifshtein, ed., S. S. Prokof’ev: Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniia, 2d ed. (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1961), 76.
155
The Two Orchestral Suites From Romeo and Juliet
In his 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev noted:
I made two symphonic suites from the ballet, each consisting of seven movements. They
do not follow each other consecutively; both suites develop parallel to each other. Some
numbers were taken directly from the ballet without alteration, others were compiled
from different sources within it. These two suites do not cover the entire music and I
shall perhaps be able to make a third. Besides the suites I compiled a collection of ten
pieces for piano, selecting the parts best suited for transcription. The suites were
performed before the ballet was produced.265
In the early autumn of 1936, Prokofiev started assembling the two orchestral
suites from the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet. As he stated in the 1941
autobiography, most of the materials for the suites were taken directly from the 1935
score, with only minor changes.266 Ten of the fourteen numbers in the two suites appear
as they were presented in the ballet. One example of this is “Masks,” the fifth number of
the first suite. It corresponds exactly to No. 11 in the 1935 score, “Masks.” The
remaining four numbers are conglomerations of two or more numbers from the ballet.
Number seven from the first suite, “Death of Tybalt,” uses sections from No. 31, “Tybalt
fights with Mercutio,” No. 33, “Romeo decides to avenge Mercutio’s death,” and No. 34,
“Act II finale” (see figure 6.1: Coordination of orchestral suites with the 1935 score (by
number). Although the material in both of the suites is nearly note-for-note from the
1935 score, the arrangement of numbers is such that no complete narrative thread exists
— instead the results are two concert suites that serve as static snapshots of scenes from
Romeo and Juliet (see figure 6.2, Chronological arrangement of the fourteen numbers
comprising Romeo and Juliet suites one and two).
265
Sshlifstein, Prokofiev: Materialy, 75.
266
One of these changes was instrumentation. The 1935 score called for three trumpets and six French
horns, the suites use two trumpets and four French horns.
156
157
158
As discussed in Chapter 5, Prokofiev left the suites ambiguous as to whether or
not Romeo and Juliet die. From the suites either the happy or a tragic ending is possible.
This is not important in terms of the suites themselves, since they were not constructed to
have any narrative consistency, but it was important for Prokofiev to consider in terms of
future productions. If Prokofiev had committed himself one way or the other in the
suites, he would most likely have to stick to that version of the ending in any staging of
Romeo and Juliet.
The 1938 Brno State Theater Premiere of Romeo and Juliet
Perhaps because of the success of the two suites from Romeo and Juliet in
Europe, Prokofiev finally secured a production of the ballet in 1938, at the Brno State
Opera House in Brno, Czechoslovakia. The contract with the Brno State Theater was
signed on January 19, 1938.267 Most primary documents about the Brno production of
Romeo and Juliet are said to have been destroyed in fires during the second World War,
but some information does survive, including the program from the production (see
figure 6.3, Program from the December 1938 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Brno
State Theater, and figure 6.4, Translation of the program of the 1938 Brno production of
Romeo and Juliet).
Ivo Vana Psota, the artistic director of the Brno Ballet, was the choreographer and
director of the Brno production of Romeo and Juliet. He also danced the role of Romeo.
Vera Semberova danced the role of Juliet. According to her memoirs, Semberova had
267
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 3, no. 222.
159
160
Figure 6.3: Program from the December 1938 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Brno
State Theater.
161
very strong ideas of how Juliet should be danced, so she created her own solo
choreography and worked with Psota on the duets between Romeo and Juliet.268
Semberova decided Juliet should not be danced on pointe, as was common practice for
the female lead. She explained her rationale for excluding pointe from the role of Juliet:
I felt strongly that the strict classical dance forms, as they were understood in 1938,
sometimes tended to dominate the music and did not allow a truthful expression of the
emotions that I believed Juliet must have felt. On pointe I felt I would be overly
restricted and not able to select what I thought would be the fitting movement forms for
the appropriate expression; pointe would not allow me the freedom of movement to
portray Juliet as I envisaged her.269
As was discussed in Chapter 2, dancing on pointe was considered the embodiment
of the feminine, so Semberova’s portrayal of Juliet was a rejection of femininity as it was
previously constructed in ballet productions.270 Semberova claimed that Psota was
originally against the idea of a pointe-less Juliet, but soon accepted it.271
In the Brno production, Romeo and Juliet was presented as a love story within the
framework of a prologue and an epilogue danced by three angels on pointe. Having the
angels dance on pointe further underscored that the heroine of the ballet did not.
Although the January 1938 contract was for fifteen performances, the Brno
production of Romeo and Juliet closed after only eight performances. The Nazis invaded
Czechoslovakia in early 1939 and soon thereafter closed down the Brno State Theater.
Despite the circumstances behind the shortened run, Prokofiev initiated a contract dispute
268
Zora Semberova, “Prokofiev’s First Juliet,” Ballet Review, v. 22, no. 2 (Summer 1994), 20-23.
269
Semberova, “Prokofiev’s First Juliet,” 21.
270
Garafolo, p. 128.
271
Semberova, “Prokofiev’s First Juliet,” 21.
162
with the Brno Theater in 1941. The contract specified fifteen performances and despite
the fact that the remaining seven performances were not given because of the Nazi
invasion, Prokofiev pig-headedly demanded payment for all fifteen performances.272
Since no score or detailed information about the music used in the Brno
production is currently known to exist, one must make educated guesses based on the
fragmentary material that is available. According to Vera Semberova and ballet scholar
Gunhold Oberzuacher-Schuller, whose material is obviously based to a certain extent on
Semberova’s comments, the Brno production used the music contained in the two suites
from Romeo and Juliet, not the 1935 score.273 How this came about and Prokofiev’s
reaction to the change is not known. Letters in RGALI that have just become available to
scholars may reveal more, but for now I can only surmise from other evidence.
An examination of the program of the Brno production of Romeo and Juliet
shows that it was definitely an abbreviated version of the ballet, but comparing the Brno
program with the suite movements re-arranged narratively, in the order they would have
appeared in the ballet, indicates that although similar, the Brno production was most
likely not just the suites choreographed as stated by Semberova and OberzaucherSchüller. According to Semberova, the ballet was a “condensed form of the music,”274
which ended up being about half of the length of the 1935 score.275 This condensation
272
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 3, no. 129. Two letters in French from Prokofiev to the Director of the Brno
State Theater, September 20, 1940 and February 15, 1941.
273
Gunhold Oberzaucher-Schüller, “The Forgotten First Staging of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet,” Dance
View, v. 13, no. 4 (Summer 1996), 7-9.
274
Oberzaucher-Schüller, “The Forgotten First Staging of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet,” 8.
275
Semberova, “Prokofiev’s First Juliet,” 20
163
was done by Ivo Vana Psota and the music director at the Brno Theater, Guido Arnoldi.
A comparison of the dramatic action implied by the suite movements and the scene-byscene descriptions of the action in the Brno libretto also indicates that in all likelihood,
the music used in the Brno production was not just the suites orchestrated. This leaves
two possibilities as to the source of the music. The first possibility is that just the musical
numbers in Prokofiev’s 1935 score that corresponded to the actions described in the Brno
libretto were used. The other possibility is that the fourteen movements of the two suites
were adapted and rearranged into the eleven sections in the Brno libretto, nine scenes
with a prologue and epilogue. Based on the information available, it seems to me that the
first possibility, choosing selections from the 1935 score, is the most probable.
Oberzaucher-Schüller makes an interesting remark about the musical content of
the Brno production of Romeo and Juliet. He wrote that Prokofiev “wanted to revive the
form of the multi-act ballet of the late nineteenth century”276 with Romeo and Juliet, but
Psota instead staged the work as a “series of set numbers with continuity.”277
Oberzaucher-Schüller continued with the observation that: “The compositional technique
was based less on leitmotifs than on sweeping arcs of melody and harmonically selfcontained units.”278 Oberzaucher-Schüller seems to be describing the blocks of time
structure discussed in Chapter 4.
276
Oberzaucher-Schüller, “The Forgotten First Staging of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet,” 7.
277
Oberzaucher-Schüller, “The Forgotten First Staging of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet,” 7.
278
Oberzaucher-Schüller, “The Forgotten First Staging of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet,” 7-8.
164
The Creation of Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet
In January and again in April 1938, the Kirov Theater in Leningrad wrote
Prokofiev and invited him to write either an opera or a ballet for the theater, on a topic of
his choice. Prokofiev had recently secured a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the
Brno State Theater in Czechoslovakia, but he was undoubtedly anxious to get a
performance of the ballet in the Soviet Union. Although there are no known documents
confirming this supposition, most likely Prokofiev proposed that the Kirov Theater stage
his already written, yet unperformed ballet, Romeo and Juliet.
Leonid Lavrovsky, a choreographer at the Kirov Theater, was chosen by the
theater directors to be the ballet master for the Kirov’s production. Lavrovsky had been
mentioned as choreographer for short-lived plans to stage Romeo and Juliet for the
Jubilee of the Choreographic school in Leningrad in Jan 1938.279 Rostislav Zakharov,
whom Prokofiev and Radlov had wanted to stage Romeo and Juliet for the Bolshoi
Theater in 1935-36, was no longer at the Kirov Theater; he had become a ballet master at
the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Sergei Radlov, Prokofiev’s co-librettist for Romeo and
Juliet, who played a very active role in the preparations for the planned 1936 production
of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theater, seems to have had no role in the 1940 Kirov
production.
279
Shlifstein, Prokofiev: Mateerialy, 75.
165
Lavrovsky wrote very detailed memoirs about his experience staging Romeo and
Juliet, as did Galina Ulanova, the ballerina who danced the role of Juliet. Prokofiev,
however, wrote just a short paragraph in his autobiography about the 1940 Kirov Theater
production of Romeo and Juliet:
The Kirov Theater produced the ballet in January 1940 with all of the characteristic
mastery of its dancers. This mastery might have been more appreciated if the
choreography had more precisely followed the music. Due to the special acoustics of the
Kirov Theater and the need to make the rhythms as clear as possible for the dancers, I
was compelled to alter the orchestration of the ballet in many places. Because of this,
the same places in the suites are more translucent than in the ballet score.280
The accounts of Lavrovsky and Ulanova, as well as a number of letters and
telegrams, provide invaluable insights into the numerous arguments and disagreements
that marked the rehearsal process of Romeo and Juliet. Unlike Prokofiev, however, once
the ballet finally premiered, in January 1940, Lavrovsky and Ulanova were both pleased
with the results. From their points of view, it had been a long hard road, but the critical
and popular success of the ballet balanced out the earlier difficulties. Later in life,
Ulanova called Juliet her favorite role, yet at the celebration following the premiere of
Romeo and Juliet, she jokingly toasted Prokofiev with the now-famous parody of
Shakespeare’s words that provides the title for this chapter, “Never was a tale of greater
woe than Prokofiev’s music for Romeo.”281
In creating his staging of Romeo and Juliet, it seems that Lavrovsky used
Prokofiev’s music and the 1935 score as a starting point in shaping his scenario for the
ballet, but as something he could change if it conflicted with his own goals for the
280
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 75-76.
281
Galina Ulanova, “The Author of My Favourite Ballets,” S. Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles,
Reminiscences, trans. Rose Prokofieva (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), 224.
166
production. He wrote about his first meeting with Prokofiev, when he heard the music
for Romeo and Juliet for the first time, that he was very moved by the music, but he saw
immediately that some changes were needed:
My mind was made up – I was determined to produce the ballet. I told Prokofiev as
much, and he was very pleased, but his face fell when I said that a good many numbers
were still missing, that some of the music would have to be rewritten and extended. He
wrinkled his nose and made a sour face. Later I came to know that grimace well, but now
I was seeing it for the first time. “Why do you think your changes will improve matters”?
he asked. I did not reply. An awkward pause followed. Then Prokofiev asked quickly
what changes were needed and where. I said that I did not wish to invent anything on the
spot, but when I had thought the whole thing out properly and drawn up a plan of the
production we would discuss it together.282
Lavrovsky defended his decision to change Prokofiev’s ballet on the basis that the
score as Prokofiev wrote it did not reflect his artistic expectations or requirements:
“There was not a single dance in the music of the opening scene of the first act.”283 He
asked Prokofiev to add one, but the composer categorically refused. Prokofiev
unsuccessfully attempted to stand his ground and get Lavrovsky to back down, telling
him, “You must manage with what you have got.”284 The disagreement about what
constitutes a ‘dance’ underlines the fundamental disagreement between Prokofiev and
Lavrovsky. In the Petipa-era style of Imperial Ballet in which Lavrovsky was trained,
discussed in Chapter 2, music for a ballet was a collection of more or less interchangeable
numbers based on a fairly rigid formula, in which the vision of the choreographer took
precedence over that of the composer. This formula comprised set choreographic forms
such as pas-de-deux and solo variations, as well as large corp-de-ballet dances.
282
Leonid Lavrovsky, “Repository of Creative Talent,” S. Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles,
Reminiscences, trans. Rose Prokofieva (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), 270.
283
Lavrovsky, “Repository of Creative Talent,” 272.
284
Lavrovsky, “Repository of Creative Talent,” 272.
167
Prokofiev, on the other hand, approached ballet as a collaborative art, in which all artistic
components were treated as equally important. He gave careful thought to issues of
theatricality as he composed, and each musical number served to enhance the characters
or the basic story line. Therefore, he was unable to comprehend how or why it was
necessary to rework a ballet that had been completed for three years. Prokofiev saw
inserting an unplanned-for dance as completely disruptive of his carefully planned and
coordinated structure, just as he had fifteen years earlier when Romanov significantly
changed the scenario for Trapeze. Rather than trying to resolve the fundamental clash of
aesthetics, Lavrovsky acted by asserting the supremacy of his vision as the
choreographer:
In the face of such stubborn opposition I was forced to resort to a measure I would not
recommend to anyone else: without saying a word to the composer I went to a music
shop, hunted through a pile of Prokofiev’s music and choosing the Scherzo from his
Second Piano Sonata, used it as the basis for the music of a number in the first scene
called the Morning Dance: a maidservant of a simple tavern on a square in Verona meets
a manservant of the Capulets and the two perform a lively folk dance. There was a
sequel to this. Prokofiev dropped into the theatre during a rehearsal. When we came to
the Morning Dance I saw a look of utter bewilderment on his face. “You have no right to
do a thing like that,” he protested. “I’m not going to orchestrate that number.” “Then we
shall have to play it on two pianos,” I retorted. “That will be very awkward for you.” He
got up and walked out of the theater. We did not meet or telephone for several days after
that.285
Eventually Prokofiev gave in and orchestrated the number. This incident seemed
to set the pattern for the entire rehearsal process: When they disagreed, both men
stubbornly held their own ground, but eventually, perhaps afraid to jeopardize and
possibly lose another production of Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev backed down and made
the changes Lavrovsky required.
285
Lavrovsky, “Repository of Creative Talent,” 272.
168
As mentioned earlier, Sergei Radlov, despite the role he played in creating the
1935 version of Romeo and Juliet, was excluded from the 1940 Kirov Theater production
of the ballet. In a letter obviously in reply to Radlov’s inquiries about Lavrovsky and the
changes he was requesting, Prokofiev played down the tension:
So far it is nothing too terrible. With the music of the overture, he wants Romeo to stand
thoughtfully in Mantua. In a different place, he removes the honey cake seller. In order
not to kill his fantasy, I gave him this. And something else in the order of the ballet —
the Capulets (little things), while other attempts I stopped.286
At this point, early in the rehearsal process, Prokofiev seems to have thought that
he could manage Lavrovsky and that he would be able to preserve the original spirit of
the 1935 version of Romeo and Juliet in Lavrovsky’s interpretation of the ballet.
Prokofiev soon realized this might not be true. In October 1939, Lavrovsky
requested two additional variations, one for Romeo and one for Juliet. He felt that Juliet
needed a solo variation in the middle of the first act, at the Capulet’s ball, right after her
dance with Paris, and that Romeo needed a solo variation in the Balcony Scene, right
before the Love Dance.287 Prokofiev saw both of these variations as unnecessary and
disruptive to the narrative flow.
Lavrovsky wrote that Prokofiev composed the music for Juliet’s added variation
quickly and easily. “In the same way, after literally ten minutes work at the piano,
Prokofiev composed the missing dance for Juliet, known as Juliet’s Variation at the
Capulet Ball, using a theme taken from the score.”288 A number of documents, however,
286
RNB, Fond 625, no. 465, l. 3. Letter from Prokofiev to Radlov, dated February 21, 1939. Emphasis
Prokofiev’s.
287
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 593, l. 2. Letter from Lavrovsky to Prokofiev, October 17, 1939.
288
Lavrovsky, “Repository of Creative Talent,” 272.
169
refute this version of events. On October 20, 1939, Prokofiev received a telegram
reading “Immediately send the music for the variations. Lavrovsky.”289 Nine days later,
on October 29, he received a second telegram. “For the second time I ask you to send the
variations for the music of Romeo and Juliet. Work has stopped. Lavrovsky.”290
Prokofiev responded:
I am sending you the changes to Romeo’s variation and Juliet’s variation. I am sorry I
was delayed, but your choreographic thoughts stray from the line of the intent of the
music. Therefore, it was very difficult to work.291
Once again, Prokofiev tried to stand his ground and protect his artistic vision. He
considered Romeo and Juliet to be an already completed work, and therefore resented
Lavrovsky disrupting the narrative flow and aesthetic vision of the 1935 score.
Eventually, though, Prokofiev had to compromise, though not without a few barbed
remarks, and give Lavrovsky the two variations he had requested.
In his 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev mentions undanceability as a factor in the
cancellation of the planned 1936 Bolshoi Theater production of Romeo and Juliet, as
discussed in Chapter 5. The label undanceable, however, was actually applied to the
1940 Kirov Theater production of the ballet by Galina Ulanova in her memoirs of
Prokofiev. Although she eventually considered Romeo and Juliet to be one of her
favorite ballets, Ulanova at first was unable to understand Prokofiev’s concept of dance
and rhythm:
289
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 593.
290
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 593.
291
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 2, no. 216.
170
At first, as I said before, the music seemed to us incomprehensible and almost impossible
to dance to. But the more we listened to it, the more we worked, experimented and
searched, the more clearly emerged the images that music created. And gradually as we
came to understand the music, we no longer found it difficult to dance to; it became clear
both choreographically and psychologically.292
Like Lavrovsky, Ulanova found working with Prokofiev in rehearsals very trying,
especially since she found the music so difficult:
Time was flying, the rehearsals were in full swing, but we were still badly hampered by
the unusual orchestration and the chamber quality of the music. The frequent change of
rhythm, too, gave us a great deal of trouble. To tell the truth we were not accustomed to
such music, in fact we were a little afraid of it. It seemed to us that in rehearsing the
Adagio from the first act, for example, we were following some melodic pattern of our
own, something nearer to our own conception of how the love of Romeo and Juliet
should be expressed than that contained in Prokofiev’s “strange” music. For I must
confess that we did not hear that love in his music then. We did not tell Prokofiev
anything of this, we were afraid of him. All our doubts, perplexities and suggestions
were transmitted to the composer through Lavrovsky. Prokofiev seemed unapproachable
and haughty, and we felt that he had no faith in ballet or in ballet artists.293
Even with Lavrovsky’s interventions, the dancers remained puzzled by
Prokofiev’s music, and just before Romeo and Juliet was to open, on January 11, 1940,
they threatened to boycott the premiere, fearing they would make fools of themselves
onstage, trying to dance to this “strange” music.294
292
Ulanova, “The Author of My Favourite Ballets,” 224.
293
Ulanova, “The Author of My Favourite Ballets,” 222.
294
Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev, 373.
171
The 1940 Kirov Theater Production of Romeo and Juliet
In February 1935, Prokofiev wrote Radlov that the changes to Romeo and Juliet
requested by Lavrovsky were, “so far, nothing too terrible.” By the time the production
reached the stage in January 1940, Lavrovsky had in fact significantly changed the
original spirit and intent of the 1935 version as written by Prokofiev, Radlov, and Adrian
Piotrovsky.
Lavrovsky’s changes to the 1935 version of Romeo and Juliet included adding a
musical number, replacing a musical number with new music, and omitting musical
numbers (see figure 6.5, Comparison of the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet to the
1940 Kirov Theater production of the ballet). In Act I of the ballet, all of Lavrovsky’s
changes are additions. The first change is the addition of a large corp-de-ballet number
to Act I, scene 1. No. 3 in the 1940 score, “Morning Dance,” was the dance from the
Scherzo movement of Prokofiev’s second piano sonata added by Lavrovsky to rectify
“the lack of a single dance” mentioned earlier in the chapter. The next change occurs in
Act I, scene 2. No. 14 in the 1940 score, “Juliet’s Variation, is the solo variation for
Juliet that Lavrovsky added to the ball scene. The final change in the first act is a
complete restructuring of the Balcony Scene, including the addition of a new musical
number, No. 20 in the 1940 score, “Romeo’s Variation.” This scene and the effects of
Lavrovsky’s changes to the dramaturgy of the scene are discussed in more detail later in
the chapter.
In the second act of the ballet Lavrovsky extended the ending of the folk dance
that opens the first scene of the act. In No. 23 of the 1940 score, “Romeo and Mercutio,”
Lavrovsky omitted twenty-five measures of Prokofiev’s music. No. 25, “Dance with
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173
174
Mandolins,” is another addition. A fifty-five second long dance, No. 23 in the 1935
piano score, was omitted from the 1940 version. Act II, scene 2 has no changes. In scene
3 of the second act, the only changes are extensions of the endings of both of the folk
dances, No. 30, “Public Merrymaking,” and No. 31, “Further Public Festivities.”
Act III, scenes 1 and 2 of the ballet are unchanged in the 1940 score. In the third
scene of the act, Nos. 46, “Juliet’s Room,” and 48, “Morning Serenade,” have extended
endings. The biggest changes in this scene are the deletion of two dances in the 1935
score. Prokofiev wrote a “Dance of the Moors” and a “Dance of the Two Captains” for
the scene of the wedding party just before Juliet is discovered in her room, supposedly
dead.
The fourth act of the ballet is completely different from the 1935 piano score in
the 1940 version, not because of Lavrovsky’s changes, so far as is known, but because
Prokofiev rewrote the act, removing the happy ending and restoring Shakespeare’s tragic
ending where both Romeo and Juliet die.
Returning now to the closing of Act I in Romeo and Juliet, the Balcony Scene, I
would like to examine Lavrovsky’s changes in further detail to determine the aesthetic
reasons for restructuring the scene. The changes in architectural structure, especially, are
clearly seen using the blocks of time analysis put forth in Chapter 4 (see figure 6.6,
Blocks of Time comparison of Act I, scene 2, the Balcony Scene of Romeo and Juliet in
the 1935 piano score of Romeo and Juliet and in the 1940 Kirov Theater production).
As described in Chapter 4, the Balcony Scene as Prokofiev wrote it in 1935
consists of two musical numbers, numbers 17 and 18. Lavrovsky disrupted this structure
in the 1940 version of Romeo and Juliet by adding the solo variation for Romeo, No. 20
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in the 1940 score. He also rearranged the content of the original two numbers by taking
the first two blocks, C and both repetitions of D, from what was No. 18, and added them
to the first number of the scene, No. 19 in the 1940 score. He also extended the new No.
21, which was blocks E, F, and G in the 1935 score, by repeating blocks F and G a few
more times than Prokofiev did in 1935.
To understand why Lavrovsky made these changes, one needs to be familiar with
the typical layout for these types of scenes used by Petipa and others in the Russian
Imperial Grand Ballet tradition. The typical scene would begin with an extended lyrical
pas de-deux between the two leads. The choreographic emphasis would be on the female
dancer, and would include many lifts. The second section would be a short virtuosic
variation for the male dancer. The choreography often included grand leaps in a large
circle. Next would be a solo variation for the female dancer, often concluding with a
chain of 16 to 32 pirouettes in one place (usually center rear of the stage). The scene
would conclude with both dancers, often with the male entering first from the left front
and the female entering slightly later from the right rear and pirouetting downstage to
meet the male dancer. The solo chain of pirouettes can also occur in this section.
Lavrovsky certainly did not change Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet into a full-scale
spectacle in the Russian Imperial Ballet style, but he did try to recast it, to a certain
extent, into a form and a formula he was more comfortable with. In an August 1939
letter to Prokofiev, Lavrovsky informed the composer that the two solo variations he had
requested for the first act, discussed earlier in the chapter, did not meet his expectations.
He asked Prokofiev to try again. In order to aid the composer in understanding what he
wanted, Lavrovsky sent him a section of a more traditional ballet by Nicolai Tcherepnin
177
and suggested Prokofiev use it as a model. Two months later, after much prodding,
Prokofiev did complete the requested revisions, but, as mentioned earlier, included an
abrupt note stating that he found Lavrovsky’s choreographic ideas completely in
opposition to the original concept of the ballet, and therefore he had found the requested
revisions extremely difficult.
In his revised Balcony Scene of 1940, Lavrovsky kept the beginning just as
Prokofiev wrote it in 1935, but instead of having Romeo go directly into the added solo
variation, Lavrovsky moved the beginning of the love dance forward in the score to serve
as a introduction of sorts to the solo variation. As mentioned earlier, Lavrovsky rejected
Prokofiev's first attempt at this variation. In his 1939 letter Lavrovsky wrote that the
tempo of the variation as Prokofiev first wrote it was too slow. He also said “the
character of the musical material, especially that of Romeo … should and must be
energetic and masculine.”295 This energetic and masculine Romeo could perform the
types of leaps usually found in solo male variations. Prokofiev's more introverted and
thoughtful Romeo most likely would not. Finally, the love dance proper was slightly
extended and choreographed as a true pas-de-deux, a term Prokofiev pointedly avoided
using in this scene, with all of the lifts and poses one would expect in a pas-de-deux
section. Granted, Lavrovsky did not turn this scene into a formulaic scene in the Grand
Imperial Ballet style, but the changes he did make to Prokofiev's 1935 structure all seem
to be in order to accommodate sections of this formula.
295
RGALI, Fond 1929, op. 1, no. 593, l. 2. Letter from Lavrovsky to Prokofiev, October 17, 1939.
178
It is interesting to note that when Prokofiev added new music, such as Romeo’s
variation in the Balcony Scene, he still used blocks of time construction. Through this
technique, Prokofiev managed to integrate the new material into the old — musically, at
least — with no obvious stylistic discrepancies. The ability to add and take away blocks
underscores the adaptability of blocks of time both musically and dramatically. Even
though Lavrovsky changed the basic aesthetic approach in Romeo and Juliet, using
blocks of time structure, Prokofiev was able to effectively accommodate the new
material.
Critical Reception of Romeo and Juliet
Despite the threat of a dancer’s boycott in late December 1939, the Soviet
premiere of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet took place on January 11, 1940. To the relief
of all involved, the ballet immediately received high critical and popular acclaim. The
January 21, 1940 review in Sovetskoe Iskusstvo was typical in its praise:
The success of Romeo and Juliet, a production of rare beauty, content and
interest, is not just an ordinary success for Leningrad ballet, it is a success
for all of Soviet choreography, and a testament to its colossal creative and
ideological growth.296
In May 1940, the Kirov Theater production of Romeo and Juliet traveled to
Moscow and played to rave reviews. In 1946, the Bolshoi Theater mounted its own
production of the ballet, with Lavrovsky as the choreographer and Ulanova dancing the
296
E Liukom, “Romeo i Dzhul’etta: Balet S. S. Prokof’eva v GATOB im. Kirova,” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo
(January 21, 1940).
179
role of Juliet. In 1954, MosFilm released a widely acclaimed film of the 1946 Bolshoi
Theater production. When the score of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1946, it was
based on Lavrovsky’s productions, not the 1935 version as written by Prokofiev.
In 1941, in his autobiography, Prokofiev gave his opinion of the 1940 production:
The Kirov Theater produced the ballet in January 1940 with all of the characteristic
mastery of its dancers. This mastery might have been more appreciated if the
choreography had more precisely followed the music.297
Characteristically, he praised the skill of the dancers, but criticized Lavrovsky
(without naming names) for not following the choreographic intentions of the musical
score as Prokofiev had written it.
The critical and popular success of the 1940 production of Romeo and Juliet did
not seem to affect Prokofiev’s negative view of the production. He remained critical of
the “new” ballet, and, as referred to in Chapter 1, as late as 1946, he was still claiming the
1935 version to be the authentic version. He also stated that he had approved
Lavrovsky’s changes for the 1940 production only, and was dismayed that the ballet was
published in its 1940 incarnation, not the 1935 version. Despite Prokofiev’s efforts,
though, the 1935 score was ignored and to this day, has yet to be performed. It is
Lavrovsky’s version that is known and loved throughout the world.
297
Shlifshtein, Prokof’ev: Materialy, 75-76.
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CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
It is not possible to study the history of Romeo and Juliet without examining the
two separate historiographies of Prokofiev’s life and works, the Western and the Soviet.
The Western point of view traditionally has seen Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union
in the 1930s as the effective end of his compositional career, while the Soviet assessment
viewed his return as the beginning of his most fruitful creative period. Even today, more
than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, these two separate views remain in force.
Most likely, the “truth” lies somewhere between these two extremes, incorporating
aspects of both.
Romeo and Juliet was written during the years Prokofiev made his decision to
return to the Soviet Union permanent, and is often cited as a turning point in Prokofiev’s
compositional style. This “new” style, labeled New Simplicity by Prokofiev himself, is
not just Prokofiev’s answer to Socialist Realism, and it was not used for the first time in
Romeo and Juliet. It is instead a style he cultivated in the 1920s, while living in the
West, and found in compositions like his 1929 ballet The Prodigal Son. New Simplicity,
then, is just one aspect of Prokofiev’s compositional vocabulary, not a New Prokofiev
adjusting to the Soviet Regime, as it is usually portrayed.
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Throughout his career as a ballet composer, Prokofiev had a certain approach to
writing ballets and other programmatic music. He “saw” the character of the music
needed, even at the pre-compositional stage. His compositions, then, were the musical
manifestation of the snapshot he saw. Rather than composing conventional symphonies
and sonata forms driven by developmental symphonism, Prokofiev wrote music
descriptively. The controlling element was time; every musical event was carefully
coordinated to dramatic events on stage. A single block of material, unlike leitmotifs,
can be expanded and contracted to the exact length needed. Once I identified blocks of
time technique in Romeo and Juliet, I was able to see it in all of his early ballets as well.
As stated at the onset of this study, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is best known
today in the version of the ballet choreographed by Leonid Lavrovsky and first performed
at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad on December 11, 1940. It was a long and complicated
process that resulted in the acceptance of the 1940 production as the standard version of
the ballet, despite Prokofiev’s repeated protests.
Although Romeo and Juliet exists in the 1935 Prokofiev/Radlov/Piotrovsky
version and the 1940 Prokofiev/Lavrovsky version, these two versions are not all that
different in many aspects. In the musical score, the main difference is in the fourth act.
The ballet concludes with a happy ending in 1935 and with a more traditional ending in
1940. As a project, however, each version is a product of its time and circumstances.
The 1935 version of Romeo and Juliet incorporated elements of experimentalism, and the
Soviet fascination with Shakespeare and the concept of Optimistic Tragedy in the 1930s.
186
The 1940 version of Romeo and Juliet backed away from the experimentalism of the
earlier version and instead employed more traditional forms and expressions, similar to
the Petipa-era Imperial Grand Ballet in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.
The history of Romeo and Juliet reveals that the Soviet censorship of Prokofiev’s
music occurred earlier than has been thought. Up until now, it was widely accepted that
Prokofiev escaped direct censorship in 1936 in the aftermath of the Shostakovich Pravda
articles, that his “Western” status protected him somehow. The history of the 1936
Bolshoi Theater Production of Romeo and Juliet explored in this dissertation, however,
shows this is not true.
The information in this dissertation shows a number of aspects that have not been
considered before and adds depth to our understanding of Prokofiev’s masterpiece,
Romeo and Juliet.
187
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