In a special adaptation commissioned by the Royal Albert Hall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will present “Romeo and Juliet: A Theatrical Concert for Orchestra with Actors” on Friday, July 11, under the stage direction of Bill Barclay. Andris Nelsons will conduct the BSO in Prokofiev’s iconic score.

The Royal Albert Hall’s adaptation blends Prokofiev’s music with Shakespearean drama, performed by actors and orchestra without traditional ballet staging. This approach enhances the emotional impact of the story and offers audiences a fresh, immersive concert experience.

Sergei Prokofiev created three orchestral suites from “Romeo and Juliet.” Most orchestras perform selected movements from Suites 1 and 2. For example, the BSO has performed selections from the second concert suite more than 90 times since 1938.

The theatrical concert version of “Romeo and Juliet” commissioned by the Royal Albert Hall does not feature the ballet’s full score. Instead, it features excerpts Director Bill Barclay selected to support a narrated theatrical experience. This hybrid presentation combines orchestral performance with live acting and narration, designed for storytelling impact in a concert hall rather than as a complete symphonic ballet.

Prokofiev’s score blends his signature modernist edge with lush, romantic melody. The music is deeply expressive, often shifting between tenderness, tension, and violence to match the story’s arc. “Romeo and Juliet” has become one of the most frequently performed ballets in the world, and the suites extracted from it are now concert-hall staples. The ballet is considered a masterwork of 20th-century orchestral music.

Boston native Bill Barclay was a longtime acting company member at Shakespeare & Company and an artistic associate at Actors’ Shakespeare Project. From 2012 to 2019, he served as director of music at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, producing scores for 130 productions and 150 concerts. A director, writer, and composer, Barclay has created more than 20 concert-theater productions for major orchestras at venues including the Hollywood Bowl, the Kennedy Center, the Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Barbican, Washington National Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and the Southbank Centre.

He is artistic director of Concert Theatre Works and Music Before 1800, New York City’s oldest early-music-presenting organization. Barclay trained in Bali, the National Theater Institute, and Vassar College and earned his MFA in playwriting at Boston University. He has been commissioned five times by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, appearing across eight seasons.

The cast of “Romeo and Juliet” on July 11 consists of classically trained, award-winning actors whose work spans Shakespearean classics, contemporary drama, and major film and television productions:

I spoke with Bill Barclay this week to hear what he had to say about the production. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

I cut the ballet, and the BSO approved it, which is wonderful. And, more importantly, the publishers approved it, which is a much harder thing to manage. I tried to choose the meatiest, most exciting parts of the ballet that had recurrent thematic material so that the cut is basically the ballet as a microcosm featuring not just scenes but the whole story of Shakespeare through the use of fights and dance that happen during the music while no speaking occurs. That was the challenge and opportunity of this short cut.

Because it’s possibly the best piece of classical music ever written, remarried with full integrity to the most famous story of all time. It’s an opportunity to see the live arts as more than the sum of its parts. We’re not just reading from music stands. We are sword fighting. We have costumes. We have wonderfully detailed fight choreography by Robert Walsh, choreography by Christian Wold. We are bringing theater in all its many forms to the symphony orchestra, which is very rare. And that creates a definitively live experience with the most exciting raw material. And it delivers an emotional punch that’s extraordinarily moving and powerful.

It’s real catharsis, the end of this story. It’s also about young people, and we are losing young people. We’re losing them to social media. We’re losing them to screens. We’re losing them to the online world and soon to AI. And for me, the loss of children in this piece is extremely relevant topically and front of mind for all the parents in the audience.

The Prokofiev suites normally played don’t tell the story at all. They’re higgledy-piggledy picked from different parts of the ballet. You know, as Andris says, this particular adaptation is the best of both worlds. It gives the story and the music in one go together and does it with the best actors, the best musicians, the best conductor, the best space. We are providing something uncommon, and it will be radically beautiful.

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Hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra and actors perform music from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” along with text by William Shakespeare on Friday, July 11, at 8 p.m. Tickets are available here.