THE SLEEPING BEAUTY\
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky\
\
Libretto by Ivan Vsevolozhsky and Marius Petipa, based on Charles Perrault’s La Belle au bois dormant. Ballet in a prologue and three acts\
\
Recorded on 2019\
From Teatro alla Scala\
\
\
SLEEPING BEAUTY, based on Charles Perrault’s La Belle au bois dormant., is a classic fairy tale about a princess who is cursed to sleep for a hundred years by an evil fairy, to be awakened by a handsome prince at the end of them. \
\
In his rendering of the dreamiest, most sumptuous of ballets, perhaps the ballet par excellence, Nureyev maintained the incredible purity of Petipa’s original choreography, just as he had learned it at the Kirov, but infused it with a fresh sense of theatrical drama and inner strength through remarkable variations and an articulated choreographic composition that reveals all of the characters’ psychological nuances. Indeed, it was to La Scala in 1966 that Nureyev entrusted the debut of “his” Sleeping Beauty, and now, twelve years after its last performance, his masterpiece returns to the stage with the magnificent sets created by Oscar winner Franca Squarciapino at La Scala in 1993, and Felix Korobov conducting the extraordinary score by Tchaikovsky.
