The Sleeping Beauty
Mariinsky Ballet
The Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden
14 and 15 August at 7.30pm
15 August at 2pm
‘The greatest of all ballets'. This claim made for The Sleeping Beauty is one that is hard to deny for many dance-lovers. In the late 1880s, Tchaikovsky set to work on a score commissioned by the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres in St. Petersburg , which would tell the fairy-tale story of the Sleeping Beauty awakened from a spell by the kiss from a Prince. The staging was to be by Marius Petipa. From the first, The Sleeping Beauty was recognised as a masterpiece, delighting audiences with its spectacular effects and the glories of its sublime dances and its no less sublime music.
At the Mariinsky Theatre, where it was created, it is revered as the culminating masterpiece of classic ballet. From generation to generation, its interpreters have sought to deepen their understanding and to enhance their artistry in its tremendous and wonderful challenges. The production that the Mariinsky Ballet brings to London is by Konstantin Sergeyev and is recognised as a superlative, visually magnificent realisation of the score and of Petipa's choreography. Its interpreters this season include Uliana Lopatkina, Viktoria Tereshkina, Alina Somova and Leonid Sarafanov. These superb artists are the heirs in direct line from those Petersburg dancers who were the very first cast. One cannot ask for better.
