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Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet premiered in 1962 and was first performed by the Stuttgart Ballet. The exquisitely rendered ballet, set to Sergei Prokofiev’s magnificent score, is an inspired realization of William Shakespeare’s timeless tale. When the Stuttgart Ballet danced the American premiere of John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet in 1969, Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times that this staging of Prokofiev’s score “is, quite simply, the best of a surprisingly distinguished bunch. Many choreographers have attempted the score . . . but it has been left to Cranko to give the work its complete fulfillment.” Upon its Boston Ballet premiere, the Company became the only American company to hold three of Cranko’s greatest works, including Onegin and The Taming of the Shrew, as part of its extensive repertoire. In Boston, Romeo and Juliet was met with rave reviews; The Boston Globe described it as offering “elegant dancing, eye-popping pageantry, and vivid storytelling.”
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