What is the best Blu-ray of the Romeo and Juliet ballet? The Prokofiev music for Romeo & Juliet is considered to be the best ballet music ever written other than by Tchaikovsky. We now have 10 Blu-rays of this ballet. (We also have a Blu-ray of the Shakespeare play, another of the French opera Roméo et Juliette, and another of the Matthew Bourne dance theater show called Romeo + Juliet. But this story is just about the classical ballet.)
There are 3 famous versions of R&J to Prokofiev by different choreographers:
Lavrovsky created a propaganda R&J for Stalin that played in that era
Cranko in 1962 made a romantic R&J that is still in repertory in Stuttgart and other places
MacMillan in 1965 turbocharged the Cranko version for the Royal Opera House, and this is the most popular R&J today
Here are our picks for the very best R&J ballet Blu-rays:
Royal Opera House. A+. 2021. Opus Arte. The is the third MacMillan version published by the Royal Ballet. It stars Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball.
La Scala. A+. 2017. C Major. MacMillan version with the Roberto Bolle, the God of Milan, as Romeo. And Misty Copeland as Juliet is fabulous too
Stuttgart Opera Ballet. A+. 2018. Unitel. This is the Cranko version that got R&J started in today’s entertainment market. Slightly old-fashion maybe, but so well put together!
We have lots of screenshots about our picks and the runner-ups that you can reach through our Alphalist. The Matthew Bourne Romeo + Juliet may appeal more to younger viewers. It’s cut down to 90 minutes. The libretto has only a faint connection to the Shakespeare play. But it does use the Prokofiev music in a sparkling new arrangement for chamber orchestra.
We also have a Blu-ray of Romeo and Juliet Beyond Words, a movie version shot on a special set in Hungary by the Royal Opera Ballet and published by Opus Arte. This has already been seen by many viewers on TV and in movie theaters in Europe. We gave the movie a B-.