The Sleeping Beauty (Ballet and Suite)

BALLET

• Tchaikovsky completed his first draft of The Sleeping Beauty (Spyashchaya krasavitsa) in only about 40 days. He completed the music in 1889.
• Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the Imperial Theatres, wrote the scenario of Sleeping Beauty, inspired by Charles Perrault’s La belle au bois dormant. Tchaikovsky composed the music in close collaboration with choreographer Marius Petipa, who gave the composer specific directions regarding the dancers’ needs in each number.
• The Sleeping Beauty premiered in January 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.¹
• Synopsis from the American Ballet Theatre 

SUITE, Op. 66a

• In 1890, Tchaikovsky first proposed the idea of a concert suite based on music from his ballet. However, the composer never completed this idea during his lifetime because he couldn’t decide which moments from the full score to include. Tchaikovsky’s publisher, Pyotr Jurgenson, produced the concert suite in 1899.
• The Sleeping Beauty concert suite consists of five movements of music extracted from the ballet:
  1. Introduction
     Corresponding to Carabosse’s music from the ballet’s Introduction, linked with the appearance of the Lilac Fairy from the end of Act I, No. 9
  2. Adagio. Pas d’action
     “Rose” Adagio (Act I, No. 8a in the ballet)
  3. Pas de caractère. Le Chat botté et la chatte blanche
     Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat (Act III, No. 24)
  4. Panorama
     Panorama (Act II, No. 17)
  5. Valse
     Waltz (Act I, No. 6)²

1. Roland John Wiley, “Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il′yich,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 2, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051766.
2. Tchaikovsky Research contributors, “The Sleeping Beauty (suite),” Tchaikovsky Research (2023), accessed October 8, 2025, https://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/index.php?title=The_Sleeping_Beauty_(suite)&oldid=58919.