Shakespeare in Music

Antonio Méndez

‘If music be the food of love, play on!’
– Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene I

The La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra kicks off its concert season with a programme dedicated to the musical world of Shakespeare. Rediscovered at the end of the eighteenth century, the works of the Bard of Avon were a source of inspiration for many composers, and even a dramatic ideal.  

Thus, Falstaff, the opera that inaugurates the season, is an adaptation by Verdi of The Merry Wives of Windsor. A few decades earlier, German composer Otto Nicolai had already produced an opera version of the work, whose famous overture will here be performed as a concert piece.  

Conductor Antonio Méndez, returning to La Monnaie after conducting Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in 2024, has also selected five fragments from Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Ein Sommernachtstraum. After reading Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1826, the then 17-year-old composer unleashed his imagination and musical prodigy on a concert overture, which he incorporated nearly twenty years later in his incidental music for the entire play, commissioned by the King of Prussia. 

In 1935, Sergei Prokofiev drew inspiration from the timeless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to write a ballet, which he later adapted into three symphonic suites. Antonio Méndez selected several highlights from this riveting score, to round off this opening concert of the 2025-26 season in grand fashion.