I dunno, I’m not all that bothered that Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters would be portrayed as call girls and her evil stepmother as a brothel madam. I mean, the characters are horrible in the story, and this fits. But according to this story Prokofiev’s family is not happy. So the ballet isn’t going to happen. (I don’t quite understand why an opera company is doing a ballet, but I won’t go there for now.)

It’s interesting, at least to me, that the use of Prokofiev’s ballet music has to get approval. I wonder … if an orchestra was to do one of his works and, say, decides to perform it while clowns juggle, or maybe while naked (not I, of course … not in this lifetime!) or maybe while tomatoes are thrown at audience members, would they have the rights revoked? Not that I’d want any of those things to occur during a concert, but these days it seems anything could happen to draw a crowd, you know? I used to be a music librarian and I don’t recall ever being asked how we were planning on performing the works.

This year our local ballet company will be doing Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet. It’s one of the few ballet works I absolutely love to perform. GREAT music and, the last time we did it, an incredible ballet. I wonder if “the fam” (that of the Prokofeiv clan) has seen it, though.
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