Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet has been set to music dozens of times, with many operas and ballets, plus films and modernizations. Here is a look at some composers’ interpretations of the tale.

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Beginning with one of the few renditions of Shakespeare’s play in music that was actually a hit in its own time – the opera of the same name by Charles Gounod. This might have been because Gounod had recent success with a different tragedy: his take on Goethe’s Faust. Librettists Jules Barbier and Michael Carré were prepared for the task. Also, unlike many staged musical versions, Gounod preserved most of the ending – only adding a premortem love duet, but keeping the tragic finish.

The love theme from Tchaikovsky’s tone poem based on the play has become a trope in both animation and live action television and film. Shows from Sesame Street to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air have seen lovers reunited to those soaring strings of the Romeo and Juliet Overture Fantasy.

Galina Ulanova and Yury Zhdanov in Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’RIAN Archivewikimedia commons

A primary example of a musical adaptation with a changed ending was the ballet by Sergei Prokofiev. The lovers’ happy ending was so unpopular after the premiere Galina Ulanova, who had played the role of Juliet, said, “Never was a story of more woe than Prokofiev’s music for Romeo.” The entire incident includes conflicts between the Church of Christian Science with the beliefs of Communism, as well as the accusation of western corruption. Eventually Stalin himself approved of the version that we know today.

Leave it to director Franco Zeffirelli to capture the epic nature of Shakespeare’s play on screen. With actors close in age to the two leads as conceived by Shakespeare, and filmed on location in Italy, the film has been cited as influences in later works by Radiohead and Celine Dion. The score to the film, by Nino Rota, was so popular that it was released twice, and later rearranged at least twice, by both Andre Rieu and Henry Mancini.

Vincenzo Bellini also found success with I Capuleti e i Montechhi, however this is a far different version of the story than Shakespeare’s. There are only five roles, and the least singing is from Romeo and Juliet themselves, though the tragic ending remains.

When director Baz Luhrman updated the play in 1996, he gave it a modern setting while still including many anachronisms and allusions to the time of the original. The music was of the 1990s, with a soundtrack including the bands Garbage, Everclear, and Radiohead. But the balcony scene was scored with a solo piano composition by Craig Armstrong.

Duke Ellington’s album Such Sweet Thunder was entirely inspired by the works of Shakespeare. Ellington’s look at Romeo and Juliet featured two saxophones emulating The Star Crossed Lovers.

In 2013 directors Monty Sharma and Sanjay Leela Bhansali brought Shakespeare to Bollywood with Ram-Leela. The film ended up being notable for its violence, as Bhansali took great interest in the familial rivalry. Bhansali composed a good bit of the soundtrack, but one notable inclusion was a 1944 Gujarati song by Hemu Gadhvi.

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