The Sleeping Beauty, Royal Ballet

A production that is as pretty as cakes but lacks any sense of good and evil

by Ismene BrownSunday, 01 November 2009

Sleeping Beauty: 'This is the third of a string of unsatisfactory stagings, and fear shows in the pretty safeness of its design'V&A Museum Theatre Collection

Critics did not cover themselves with glory after the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty in St Petersburg on a snowy January night in 1890: “We cannot help regretting the means chosen by the theatre directorate in lowering the standard of artistry of our ballet,” wrote one. Another: “Such spectacles attract neither a constant public nor a circle of educated adherents.”

In the Mariinsky's reconstruction of the original Sleeping Beauty, no fairy would be seen dead in a similar dress to another fairy.

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