While Shakespeare wasn’t a composer, he made his love of music apparent. “How sweet sour music is,” he wrote for instance in Richard II, “(w)hen time is broke and no proportion kept.”

Kansas City’s Bach Aria Soloists and Heart of America Shakespeare Festival meld the Bard’s poetry and prose with baroque musical masterpieces, joining onstage for an evening of rich, emotional storytelling.

Though written more than 400 years ago, Shakespeare’s stories and characters illuminate a human condition and gamut of emotions familiar to modern audiences. Scenes from his greatest works – found in the First Folio – are accompanied by the ornate strains of the leading baroque composers, a glorious collaboration of language and music by old-world masters.