The Sleeping Beauty

Ballet-féerie in three acts
Libretto: Ivan Wsevolozhsky after Charles Perrault
World premiere: 3 January 1890, Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg
Polish premiere of this production: 17 December 1996, Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera

Visible from a distance, the towers of the Château d’Ussé just above the branches of the Chinon forest. There is even a small chamber with a spindle in one of the towers, and in the dark rooms you can see wax figures depicting scenes from the fairy tale. It was here that Charles Perrault came up with the longest sleeping character in history as he wandered among the castle walls near the Loire, at the invitation of Marquis Louis Bernin de Valentinay. Fascinated by Perrault’s fairy tale, the choreographer Marius Petipa wrote the libretto together with the director of the Mariinsky Theatre, while Pyotr Tchaikovsky set it to beautiful music. The world premiere of The Sleeping Beauty took place in January 1890. The scope of the production, the glamour of the set design and the sheer numbers of the ballet company made the piece famous all over the world. Thanks to the fantastic set design by Ezio Frigerio and the fabulous costumes by Franca Squarciapino we can find ourselves transported to this fairy-tale world at the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera. The production, choreographed by Yury Grigorovich after Petipa’s original, is an impressive staging in which each dynamically changing image constitutes a show of the dancers’ expertise. This colourful feast of solo variations and pas de deux, and especially the wedding act, captures the imagination of both children and parents, who are equally powerfully enchanted by this world.

Polish National Ballet
Orchestra of Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera