Based on Perrault’s famous fairy tale, Tschaikowsky’s _Sleeping Beauty_
ballet dates from the summer of 1889. Its music is generally regarded
as superior to that of the _Swan Lake_ ballet and inferior to that
of the _Nutcracker_ suite. Few ballet scores are so suitable in mood
and style for the action they accompany. The music is truly melodious
in Tschaikowsky’s lighter vein. The fantasy is conveyed in bright,
glittering colors, and, as Mrs. Newmarch pointed out, the music “never
descends to the commonplace level of the ordinary ballet music.”
There are thirty numbers in all, many of them, especially the waltz,
endearing in their lilting and haunting grace. The work was first
produced in St. Petersburg on January 2, 1890. In the early twenties,
Diaghileff, the great ballet producer, revived the work in London and
elsewhere with immense artistic _éclat_. Fragments of the ballet have
been gathered in the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe’s production of _Aurora’s
Wedding_.