BARS to Present “Symphonic Shakespeare”

Poster design for the performance being discussed

In a little less than a month’s time, the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) will present the second of the four concerts it has prepared for the 2026–2027 season. The full title of the program is Symphonic Shakespeare: In Sweet Music is Such Art. The program will present four compositions by Russian, Italian, and American composers, each based on a different play by William Shakespeare.

The program will begin with the overture composed by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, to be performed as a musical introduction to The Taming of the Shrew. This is one of eleven overtures, each associated with a different Shakespeare play. He began this “Shakespeare project” when he was living in Italy; but, with the outbreak of World War II, he fled to the United States as a Jewish refugee, settling in Hollywood. In addition to composing, he taught many familiar American composers, such as John Williams, Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and André Previn. The Taming of the Shrew will be followed by Romeo and Juliet with the second of the three suites extracted from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet score for that play.

The second half of the program will begin in the United States with orchestral selections composed by Cole Porter for the music Kiss Me, Kate. The performance will then conclude with one of the lesser known fantasy overtures by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The best-known of those overtures is “Romeo and Juliet.” However, this program will conclude with the less-known “Hamlet” overture.

Like all of this season’s BARS concerts, this program will be performed in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at 50 Oak Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. As of this writing, a generous number of seats are available. Tickets may be purchased online through a Tix Web page with prices between $6.50 and $43.50.