Technical Details: Interactive Menu Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1/ Digital Stereo Region Code: 0 Picture Format: 4:3     Running Time: 152 min.   Screener

Order No: 90030 Romeo et Juliette Music by Sergei Prokofiev Ballet: Les Ballets de Monte Carlo Choreography: Jean-Christophe Maillot Though the current Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo was established in 1985. In 1993, the choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot became the company's artistic director and has subsequently helped it evolve from a regional company to a European contender with a unique vision and style. The tradition that Maillot has mostly maintained is the narrative style that Diaghilev pioneered. Many mid-century choreographers tried to make modern ballet purer, as movement set to music with no overt story to tell. Maillot not only connects everything on stage to the story, he makes the story his own in ways that traditionalists may find alarming. His version of Romeo & Juliet which uses the Prokofiev score, downplays the social and political ramifications that most 20th-century choreographers have interpreted in Shakespeare's play and concentrates on the emotional violence inherent in adolescent sexuality. These two teenage lovers are doomed not because of families' feud, but because their obsessive love blinds them to the self-destructive road they are on. Torn between contradictory impulses, between tenderness and violence, fear and pride, the lovers are caught in the throes of a tragedy that exemplifies their youth and the extreme emotions and internal conflicts that characterise that period of life. Maillot’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s drama was hailed by the press throughout the world: “one of the most beautiful ballets adapted from Shakespeare's masterpiece that can be seen today (Scènes Magazine)…“ (…) dazzling choreography flows on stage like a rapid spring…” (La Liberation Shanghai) … “aesthetically spectacular piece, of marvellous rhythmic fluidity” ( El Pais). The DVD in hand presents a recording of the first performance of the ballet in 1996 at the Monte Carlo Opera House.