Romeo and Juliet

*This event has been rescheduled from December 9 to December 4 at 2:00 PM.

Inspired by love, passion, and betrayal, this performance begins with Carlos Gardel’s Por Una Cabeza, the hit song from the movie Scent of a Woman. Our featured guest artist, Daniel Hass, performs the highly recognizable The Swan from Carnival of the Animals, in addition to Popper’s virtuosic work, Concert Polonaise. The first half closes with a medley from the 1988 classic Cinema Paradiso, and the well known “diamond song” Palladio featured in De Beers commercials. Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet is one of the finest ballet scores of all time, but that was not the general consensus at the outset. How puzzling it is to be reminded that the dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet, preparing for a Russian premiere that would be repeatedly delayed, complained bitterly about Prokofiev’s score, dismissing it as “undanceable!” Frustrated with its reception, in 1936 Prokofiev put together two concert suites featuring music from the ballet. Yunior Lopez has assembled an original sequence that draws on material from the suites. They flow in an order selected by Maestro Lopez for its musical logic, rather than for how they fall in the complete ballet.