The conductor of the Boulder Symphony wanted to do a concert celebrating music inspired by Shakespeare, but there is so much to choose from. How to choose just one concert’s worth?

Devin Patrick Hughes and the Boulder Symphony (courtesy of the Boulder Symphony)

In the end he settled on two familiar 19th-century scores — Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture — and one new work, a setting of Sonnet 54 commissioned from CU graduate Elizabeth Comninellis. The three works make up the program for “Shakespeare’s Potion,” to be performed Saturday, Nov. 18.

Both the Mendelssohn and the Tchaikovsky scores marked important milestones in the composers’ careers. Mendelssohn wrote the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he was 17. Tchaikovsky was 30 but had not yet received recognition as a composer when Romeo and Juliet was first performed in 1870. Like Mendelssohn’s Overture, is was the first piece to gain acclaim for the composer.

Read more in Boulder Weekly.

# # # # #

Shakespeare’s Potion
Boulder Symphony and Chorus, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor

Elizabeth Comninellis

7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18
First Presbyterian Church, 1820 15^th St., Boulder

Mendelssohn: Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
   Christiana McMullen, soprano
Chelsea Laggan, mezzo
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Elizabeth Comninellis: World Premiere, setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 54
Elizabeth Comninellis, vocal soloist

Tickets