Only the hardest of hearts could remain unmoved by the visceral power of John Cranko’s 1962 Romeo and Juliet.

The finest ballet set to Prokofiev’s monumental score, exquisitely performed here by the Opera Australia Orchestra under Nigel Gaynor with the brass expertly negotiating its exacting articulation and dynamic extremes, it is quite simply the perfect blend of music, choreography and design.

Sharni Spencer and Callum Linnane in The Australian Ballet’s 2022 season of Romeo and Juliet. Photo © Daniel Boud

Jürgen Rose’s backcloths are among the finest designed for a ballet and beautifully relit here by Jason Morphett after Jon Buswell – their forced perspective making it difficult to determine where their 3D renderings end and the physical set begins.

Rose’s depiction of the natural world is wonderfully naïve, like something out of a Rousseau painting, topped off by his signature crooked lines that Cranko insisted on retaining when Rose’s original sketches made their way to the stage.

Yet Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet is more than a beautifully crafted ballet. It is, frankly, one of the finest adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedy, making it even harder to believe that Prokofiev originally conceived a happy ending...