The Sleeping Beauty

Composer: TCHAIKOVSKY, Peter Ilyich
  • Tchaikovsky completed his first draft of The Sleeping Beauty (Spyashchaya krasavitsa) in only about 40 days. He completed the music in 1889.1
  • 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.2
    • Petipa and Tchaikovsky made a great team: they went on to collaborate on The Nutcracker in 1891-2, and Swan Lake in 1895. 
  • The Sleeping Beauty premiered in January 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.3
  • Synopsis from the American Ballet Theatre 

Sources

  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. Ibid.
  3. Ibid.

Cut IDs

10341 10342 10370 10371 10372 18970 49162 49165