“A Story of More Woe”

This chapter contextualises the Romeo and Juliet adaptations by Hector Berlioz and Sasha Waltz in the broader receptions of the play in romantic music and theatre dance, comparing them to other musical adaptations by Charles Gounod, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Prokofiev, as well as other choreographic adaptations by Kenneth MacMillan, Angelin Preljocaj, Mauro Bigonzetti, and Thierry Malandain. Even though both Berlioz and Waltz adapt the tragic love story in idiosyncratic ways, the comparison to other canonical renditions reveals that it is because of, not in spite of, these idiosyncrasies that their adaptations emblematise the creative afterlife of Shakespeare’s play.