Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet was first written with a happy ending
Prokofiev's first version of Romeo and Juliet let the lovers survive, defying Shakespeare. Soviet officials objected, the Bolshoi shelved it, and the full ballet first reached the stage not in Moscow but in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. The acclaimed Leningrad staging of 1940 later won a Stalin Prize.
Prokofiev recalled returning to Leningrad at the end of 1934 to negotiate with the Kirov Theatre, asking for a lyrical subject. Adrian Piotrovsky suggested several, among them Tristan and Isolde, and Prokofiev seized on Romeo and Juliet at once. The scenario, by Piotrovsky and Sergey Radlov, followed drambalet, the dramatised style then favoured at the Kirov over displays of pure choreography. When the Kirov deal fell through, the Bolshoi's chief conductor offered a contract, signed in summer 1935, and Prokofiev nearly completed the score in September at the theatre's holiday retreat at Polenovo.
An audition at the Bolshoi went badly. The upbeat ending alarmed cultural officials, and production was postponed indefinitely when Platon Kerzhentsev, chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs, had the theatre's staff overhauled. The climate after Pravda's 1936 attack on Shostakovich and other so-called degenerate modernists, Piotrovsky among them, may also have played a part. The conductor Yuri Fayer, who met Prokofiev often during composition, pressed him to restore the tragic ending.
Meanwhile the music circulated as concert suites in Moscow and the United States; Prokofiev eventually drew three orchestral suites and a piano suite from the score. The first full staging took place at the Mahen Theatre in Brno on 30 December 1938, a one-act version built mostly from the first two suites. Prokofiev could not attend because Soviet authorities restricted his travel abroad.
The version known today opened at the Kirov, now the Mariinsky, on 11 January 1940. Leonid Lavrovsky choreographed it, with Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeyev in the title roles. Lavrovsky altered the score considerably over the composer's objections, yet Prokofiev later credited him as a co-author of the libretto. The production won international praise.
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)
