Ballet "Sleeping Beauty": content, video, interesting facts

P.I. Tchaikovsky ballet "Sleeping Beauty"

The Sleeping Beauty ballet is a fabulous performance, a delightful extravaganza that captures the viewer as its bright and solemn visual component, along with the musical theme of the great authorship Tchaikovsky, and deep philosophical overtones. The ballet in three acts was based on the plot of the fairy tale of Charles Perrault known to all of us about the princess who had fallen asleep for a hundred years, who was awakened from her witchcraft only by the kiss of a beautiful prince.

Creating a score for this production, Tchaikovsky fully revealed his legendary talent, erecting music for the ballet from the rank of "subordinate state" accompanied by dance, in a complex and opening new horizons work. Great music, excellent dancing and festive scenery for two and a half hours return the viewer to the magical world of childhood.

Summary of Tchaikovsky's ballet "Sleeping Beauty" and a lot of interesting facts about this piece read on our page.

Summary

Behind the opened curtain, the spectator is awaited by a luxurious festivity, organized by King Florestan in his palace on the occasion of the christening of the newborn princess Aurora. Among the guests there are six good fairies who arrived to reward the little daughter of the king with magical gifts. However, the general merriment suddenly gives way to horror, when the angry and powerful fairy Carabosss rushes into the ballroom, enraged by the fact that they forgot to invite her to the royal celebration. She wants revenge and imposes a terrible spell on little Aurora, according to which the princess will forever fall asleep forever on her day of majority, her finger pricking with an ordinary weaving spindle. After the departure of Carabos Aurora’s godmother, the Lilac fairy tries to soften the gloomy spell by telling the saddened royal couple that hope for a favorable outcome is their daughter’s not going to sleep forever, but for 100 years, and a beautiful prince can wake her up.

On the day of majority of Aurora, King Florestan again arranges a magnificent celebration in the garden of his palace. Butler Catalabut reads the edict of the ruler, stating that everyone who carries the spindle or other sharp objects into the castle will go to the dungeon. Court weavers, who ended up in the palace with their working tools, hardly manage to escape the severe punishment.

During the holiday, numerous noble and rich suitors, who are good-looking, come from royal families, are gallant and worthy, are wooed to a beautiful princess. But none of them can capture the heart of a young girl. Suddenly, Aurora notices in the corner of the garden an old woman, in whose hands is a spindle. The girl runs up to her, takes the spindle in her hands and starts spinning with him in the dance, imagining that she is dancing with her lover. Carelessly touching the sharp end of the spindle, Aurora falls unconscious and falls into a deep sleep. Princes summoned to the ball rush to grab the culprit of misfortune, but the old woman, who turned, as it turns out, the evil fairy Carabosch, laughs out loud and disappears, pleased with the accomplished crime. The Cross Lilac Fairy decides to help the royal family in this unimaginable grief and plunges the entire courtyard into a dream with Aurora for 100 years so that everyone can witness the promised wonderful awakening of the princess.

I passed the century, and now, making his way through the dense thickets during the hunt, the beautiful Prince Desiree gets, along with his retinue, into an abandoned garden. The hunters and their attendants begin to dance and have fun here. Suddenly, on the majestic boat on the river floats already familiar to the viewer fairy Lilac. Appearing to the prince, she points him to the castle, where the king and queen, servants and courtiers, where all the same young Aurora rest peacefully, are frozen for a century. The prince stares in amazement at the picture that has opened before him - people who have stopped motionless. He calls out to the king, the butler, but receives no answer, and then notices the sleeping beauty Aurora. The prince is so amazed at the amazing beauty of the girl that he immediately leans in to kiss her. From a gentle kiss, the princess wakes up, and the castle and all its inhabitants come to life at that very moment. Prince Desiree asks for the hand of Aurora from her royal father. The tale ends with a solemn wedding ceremony for young people.

A photo:

Interesting Facts

• Each act of ballet is an independent work, like a part of a symphony - closed and full in form.
• The performance has a deep philosophical meaning, opposing the Lilac Fairy and the Carabos Fairy, which personifies the eternal struggle between good and evil, and the all-conquering power of pure love of Aurora and Desiree becomes the outcome of the tale.
• Before Tchaikovsky, this tale in the form of a ballet was staged by the French composer Herold, who created a production entitled "La belle au bois dormant"(" Beauty of the sleeping forest ") in 1829.
• The ballet became one of the most expensive premieres of the Mariinsky Theater - 42 thousand rubles were allocated for it (a quarter of the annual budget of the theaters of St. Petersburg).
• Scenography for the ballet of 2011 in Moscow was staged by the artist Ezio Frigerio, who won the Oscar for the film “Cyrano de Bergerac”.
• The name of King Florestan XIV in honor of the King of France Louis XIV, considered the founder of the ballet genre.
• The author wrote music for ballet, traveling around Europe, and during his work on Sleeping Beauty visited Paris, Marseille, Tiflis, Constantinople, and then, returning to Moscow, provided ready-made work.
• Vsevolzhsky decided to stage a ballet based on a French tale of political motives, fervently supporting the course of Tsar Alexander III towards rapprochement with France.
• Marius Petipa was born in Belgium and from the age of 9 he took part in productions staged by his father. From 1847 until the end of his life he lived and worked in Russia.
• In the 2013 modernist production of Matthew Born, Aurora is in love with a royal gardener named Leo, and the source of evil is the son of an evil witch who wants to avenge his mother.
• In 1964, the Soviet film-ballet "Sleeping Beauty" was shot, where choreographer Sergeyev was involved. The leading role in the film was performed by ballerina Alla Sizova, for which she was awarded the French Academy of Dance Prize.

Popular numbers

Waltz from Act I (listen)

Pas d'action adagio (listen)

Fairy of Lilac (listen)

Puss in boots and white kitty (listen)

Music

Despite the fact that the ballet was created on the basis of an old French fairy tale, the music written by Tchaikovsky, in its lyrical component and emotional richness, is absolutely Russian. In this ballet, each musical part is a bright masterpiece, evolving from stage to stage and culminating in the apotheosis of the triumph of love in the form of a big adagio in the finale of the performance.

With his work, Tchaikovsky does not simply describe the plot, it reflects the contradictions of a person’s inner world, that eternal struggle of light and darkness that goes in everyone’s soul, regardless of age or country. The musical accompaniment becomes the final touch of the narration, its integral part.

The music of the great maestro for all decades of the Sleeping Beauty productions has undergone various changes. The exact chronology of these changes during the existence of ballet in the imperial theater could only be restored from posters. So, almost immediately after the show began, the third act lost its slow Sarabande, and a little later, the variations of the Lilac fairy, and the minuet was excluded from the peasant dance suite. In the 20s of the 20th century, the prologue reduced the scene of the appearance of the fairy Carabosse and the dance scenes of hunters.

Each director of the Sleeping Beauty ballet changes the original score in one way or another in accordance with their own ideas.

History of creation

The premiere of the ballet took place on January 3, 1890 on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater and created a real sensation. The idea to embody this amazing tale on stage came to the head of the Imperial Theaters Vsevolzhsky Ivan Alexandrovich, who in addition to his high-ranking service was engaged in literature, wrote scripts and was known as a bright theatrical figure of his time. It was Vsevolzhsky, together with the famous choreographer Marius Petipa, who began writing the libretto for the production. The basis of the scenes and the general spirit of the ballet was the magnificence of the court of Louis XIV’s reign, and the magnificent music had to match and reveal the tale from a new perspective. The theater director was so imbued with the Sleeping Beauty ballet that he even personally created sketches for the actors' costumes.

To write musical accompaniment for the play was proposed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Vsevolzhsky and Petipa provided the composer with an exceptionally accurate ballet plan, which was calculated literally before each measure, so a very precise and time-consuming work was required from the musician. He, in turn, created a truly unique work, which was a real breakthrough in the field of ballet music of that time. Raising the bar very high, "Sleeping Beauty" became a kind of benchmark for many years, for the first time making music for ballet the highest category of art.

The choreography of the production did not lag behind the musical theme -M. Petipa embodied the perfection of movements in each act, making the dance incredibly logical and thoughtful to the smallest detail. It is thanks to his efforts that the Sleeping Beauty has become a classic classic ballet book reader, incorporating all the most sophisticated and subtlest elements of it.

The Sleeping Beauty has become not only the most beautiful, but also the most expensive staging of the Mariinsky Theater, and to this day remains a recognized masterpiece of ballet art.

Productions

After the premiere of "Sleeping Beauty" in St. Petersburg, Marius Petipa brought the performance to the Italian "La Scala", where the public first saw the new ballet in 1896. At the same time, the role of Princess Aurora, as well as in Russia, was played by Carlotta Brianza. In 1989, the Moscow Imperial Troupe received permission to stage a performance on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. Alexander Gorsky was involved in the production, and Andrei Arends conducted the orchestra, and Lyubov Roslavleva played the main role of the beautiful Aurora. The Moscow version completely preserved the Petipy choreography.

In 1910, The Sleeping Beauty was a happy chance for director Dyagilev, who was involved in the production of the ballet The Firebird in Paris. However, the accompanist could not complete the work within the specified time, so he went on a substitution and put the dance of the princess of the Blue Bird and Florina from the play “Sleeping Beauty”, dressing them up in colorful oriental costumes. Since the French did not see the Russian production, they well received the play, which was specifically renamed Firebird for this occasion.

In 1914, the ballet was resumed on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, but already under the direction of Nikolai Sergeev, who relied on the recordings of his teacher Stepanov. Sergeyev’s version was brought to London in 1921, and in 1922 the production returned to where it began its triumphal procession - to the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg.

Throughout the 20th century, the Sleeping Beauty was successfully staged on the most diverse stages of many countries, becoming a true world heritage of art. The Bolshoi Theater alone saw seven different versions of ballet, each of which was not inferior to the rest in beauty and greatness.

After a long and global renovation in 2011, the Bolshoi Theater again met its audience with the Sleeping Beauty ballet, where Svetlana Zakharova played the role of Aurora, and the American David Holberg played the role of Prince Desiree.

There are several modern readings of the play that use classical music by Tchaikovsky to accompany modernist choreography. One of these original productions that deserve special attention is Matthew Born's ballet - a gothic tale with a pronounced love line, where the plot of Aurora wakes up in the modern world, which, however, is surprisingly surreal.

The staging of the Spanish choreographer Duato is an extraordinary look at a classical work. Nacho Duato tried to talk with the audience in the language of dance and recreate the charm of the magic of children's fairy tales, while maintaining the romantic spirit of the famous work.

"Sleeping Beauty" is recognized as a true world masterpiece of ballet art, setting a high standard for many generations to come. The staggering success of the performance in 1890, when the royal family was present in the hall of the Mariinsky Theater, is echoing applause today. Immortal music Tchaikovsky, classical choreography with original elements or altogether modified, luxurious scenery and exquisite costumes, the magic of a children's fairy tale and the deep problems of eternal philosophical questions - all this merged into an incredible beauty and pomposity spectacle, which is certainly worth seeing.