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The Sleeping Beauty (ballet)

Ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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History

Tchaikovsky was approached by the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St. Petersburg, Ivan Vsevolozhsky on 25 May 1888 about a possible ballet adaptation on the subject of the story of Undine. It was later decided that Charles Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant would be the story for which Tchaikovsky would compose the music for the ballet. Tchaikovsky did not hesitate to accept the commission, although he was aware that his only previous ballet, Swan Lake, was met with little enthusiasm at that stage of his career.

The ballet's libretto was primarily based on Perrault's 'La belle au bois dormant', with extra elements incorporated from the Brothers Grimm's 'Dornröschen' version of the story. In that version, the Wicked Fairy bursts into the christening only after all the good fairies have bestowed their gifts on the baby princess except for the last one, and the Princess's parents survive the 100-year sleep to celebrate the Princess's wedding with the Prince. However, Vsevolozhsky also incorporated Perrault's other characters from his stories into the ballet, such as Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Bluebird, Bluebeard, Ricky of the Tuft and Tom Thumb. Other French fairy tale characters to be featured are Beauty and the Beast, Pretty Goldilocks and The White Cat. Regardless, Tchaikovsky was happy to inform the Director of the Imperial Theatre that he had great pleasure studying the work and came away with adequate inspiration to do it justice.

The choreographer was Marius Petipa, ballet master of the Imperial Ballet, who wrote a very detailed list of instructions as to the musical requirements. Tchaikovsky worked quickly on the new work at Frolovskoye; he began initial sketches in the winter of 1888 and began orchestration on the work on 30 May 1889.

The ballet's focus was on the two main conflicting forces of good (the Lilac Fairy) and evil (Carabosse); each has a leitmotif representing them, which run through the entire ballet, serving as an important thread to the underlying plot. Act III of the work, however, takes a complete break from the two motifs and instead places focus on the individual characters of the various court dances.

The ballet's premiere received more favorable accolades than Swan Lake from the press but Tchaikovsky never had the luxury of being able to witness his work become an instant success in theatres outside of Russia. He died in 1893. By 1903, The Sleeping Beauty was the second most popular ballet in the repertory of the Imperial Ballet (the Petipa/Pugni The Pharaoh's Daughter was first), having been performed 200 times in only 10 years.

A production mounted at the La Scala in Milan did not arouse much interest and it was not until 1921 that, in London, the ballet finally gained wide acclaim and eventually a permanent place in the classical repertoire. In 1999, the Mariinsky Ballet reconstructed the original 1890 production, including reproductions of the original sets and costumes. Although the 1951 Kirov production by Konstantin Sergeyev is available on DVD/Video, the 1999 "authentic" version was never commercially released.

The Sleeping Beauty is Tchaikovsky's longest ballet, lasting nearly four hours at full length (counting the intermissions). The complete score runs practically 3 hours. It is nearly always cut.

At the premiere, Tsar Alexander III summoned Tchaikovsky to the imperial box. The Tsar made the simple remark 'Very nice,' which seemed to have irritated Tchaikovsky, who had likely expected a more favorable response. In any case the Tsar immediately paid Tchaikovsky a substantial bonus.

Performance history

St. Petersburg premiere (world premiere)

  • Date: 15 January 1890
  • Place: Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg
  • Balletmaster: Marius Petipa
  • Conductor: Riccardo Drigo
  • Scene Designers: Henrich Levogt (Prologue), Ivan Andreyev (Act 1), Mikhail Bocharov (Acts 1 & 2), Matvey Shishkov (Act 3)
  • Director of the Imperial Theaters: Ivan Vsevolozhsky
  • Original Cast: Feliks Krzesiński (King Florestan), Giuseppina Cecchetti (Queen), Carlotta Brianza (Princess Aurora), Marie Petipa (Lilac Fairy), Enrico Cecchetti (Carabosse, Bluebird), Pavel Gerdt (Prince Désiré), Varvara Nikitina (Princess Florine)

Moscow premiere

  • Date: 17 January 1899
  • Place: Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre
  • Balletmaster: Aleksandr Gorsky
  • Conductor: Andrey Arends
  • Scene Designers: Anatoliy Geltser, Karl Valts (Waltz)
  • Original Cast: Lyubov Roslavleva (Princess Aurora), M. Grachevskaya (Lilac Fairy), Vasily Geltser (Carabosse), Ivan Khlyustin (Prince Désiré)

Other notable productions

  • 1896, Milan, La Scala, staged by Giorgio Saracco, Carlotta Brianza as Aurora
  • 1921, London, Alhambra Theatre, as The Sleeping Princess, Diaghilev production, staged by Nikolay Sergeyev, scenes by Léon Bakst
  • 1937, Philadelphia, staged by Catherine Littlefield
  • 1945, San Francisco, staged by Sergei Temoff for the San Francisco Russian Opera and Ballet Association
  • 1946, London, Royal Opera House debut, performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet.
  • 1968, London, with the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Costumes and masks were created by Rostislav Doboujinsky, in collaboration with Lila de Nobili.
  • 1978 at Stuttgart Ballet, choreographed by Marcia Haydée with sets by Jürgen Rose. The production shows Carabosse as a virtuoso role for a male dancer. It has been staged also at Turkish National Ballet (2000), Teatro Municipal Santiago de Chile (2006), Royal Ballet of Flanders in Antwerp (2006), West Australian Ballet in Perth (2010), Royal Swedish Ballet at Stockholm (2012), Korea National Ballet at Seoul (2016), Czech National Ballet at Prague (2021), Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (2022) and Berlin State Ballet (2022)
  • 1990, San Francisco, with San Francisco Ballet as choreographed by Helgi Tómasson in tribute to Tchaikovsky, and with a focus on maintaining the Russian-French connection
  • 1992, Basel, Theater Basel reworked by Youri Vámos with new narrative involving the life of Anna Anderson and her claim to be Grand Duchess Anastasia. The order of musical numbers has been slightly changed, some numbers omitted with other music by Tchaikovsky added and major set pieces of Petipa's choreography retained, but now placed in different narrative context - often performed as Anderson's "memories". This version has been performed by a number of central European ballet companies over the past two decades.
  • 1999, St. Petersburg, Mariinsky Theatre, staged by Sergei Vikharev from Stepanov notations with recreations of the original sets and costumes.
  • 2015, New York City, American Ballet Theatre, staged by Alexei Ratmansky from the Stepanov notations, with sets and costumes by Richard Hudson after the 1921 production designed by Léon Bakst.
  • 2025, Seattle, Pacific Northwest Ballet staged by Doug Fullington. This production of The Sleeping Beauty enchanted with scenic design by glass artist Preston Singletary and costumes by Paul Tazewell (Hamilton, West Side Story, PNB's Swan Lake and Wicked). This production infused the story of Sleeping Beauty with a Pacific Northwest-inspired fairyland and Native American storytelling.

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