Kids sleeping story

At first, the prince was happy with the brides he had found (of course, he could not remember the faces after the evening of dancing!), but the blood betrayed the liars. They were opened by birds (according to some versions, they lived on the grave of Cinderella's mother), the same birds, as a punishment, pecked out the eyes of the ladies who decided to cheat. By the way, the bloody scene with shortening the size of the foot was included in the version of the Brothers Grimm.

But Cinderella and the prince ended up quite happily!

The first full-length Disney cartoon has forever entered the world culture as a beautiful story about love and suddenness (in fact, the prince accidentally found and kissed the beauty in the coffin!). Older versions of Snow White tell roughly the same tale, but with some significant twists that have since been adapted for a children's audience.

The Brothers Grimm's villain was not the stepmother at all, but the girl's own mother, who poisoned her daughter with the help of the fruit you know. The prince woke up Snow White not with a kiss of love at first sight of the lifeless maiden, but by putting the girl on a horse and taking her to his castle. Why did he need a body? Do not ask, history is silent about this - on the way, a piece of a poisonous apple fell out of the heroine's throat from shaking, she woke up and everything ended just fine. For everyone except my mother - during the wedding she was sent to dance in fashionable "Spanish boots", iron and red-hot. The parent did not survive the dance. Oh yeah, there were no gnomes in the early versions at all.

_{A PAINTED SNOW WHITE WILL BE A REAL}

Here are a few more details: instead of the heart, the villain wanted to feast on Snow White's liver and lungs, well, the arsenal of tools was richer - here both a choking cord for a dress and a poisonous comb were used. Are you saying it's too dark? Do not rush to draw conclusions, because Grimm thus altered the tale of Basil, called "The Young Slave". There, a seven-year-old child received a “soporific” wound in the head from a comb, grew up while lying in a crystal coffin to a beautiful girl and became a victim of his aunt. Only a secret accidentally told to the doll saves the beauty from a terrible death. End!

It seemed that quite recently the legendary “You are our guest” sounded on cinema screens, Hermione was dancing with a shaggy monster, and the candelabrum with the clock bickered to the delight of all the audience. This fairy tale itself is scary enough that its older sisters will not be much different. Perhaps the most ancient - the primary source of history is the ancient Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid. Although the story is very far from the realities of the current "Beauty and the Beast", the common pattern is obvious: an overly curious captive, love for the "kidnapper" and a beautiful man under an unrecognizable face.

A variation closer to the usual was written in 1740 by Gabriel-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Here the story acquires additional family details: the monster turns out to be an orphan, the boy was given to an evil aunt, a sorceress and seductress. By the way, this scenario is more logical - the guy received the appearance of the beast for a refusal, and not for a fleeting inhospitable impulse.

Belle also turns out to be not so simple: she is the merchant's adopted daughter, her real parents are the king and the good fairy. And there were also evil sisters who are given a lot of screen time in our domestic variation of this fairy tale (“The Scarlet Flower”). But in general, this legend does not need frightening progenitors - Stockholm syndrome and the love of man for a monster do just fine on their own.

The cartoon "Rapunzel: A Tangled Story" by itself manages with its usual primary sources quite freely - still, it was not a prince at all who climbed into the tower to the beauty, but an ordinary, albeit very handsome robber. But Disney princesses are no strangers to this, Jasmine is a prime example of this.

And yet, let's look at the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm: there really was a prince in it, and he also climbed into the tower by deception (repeating Gothel's call) and, extremely unpleasant for the heroine, took advantage of the situation. Later, the sorceress noticed the girl's pregnancy, cut off her hair and sent the mother and child to wander on the street, and threw the prince from the tower. In the process of falling, the guy injured his eyes on the thorn bush and went blind. End. Would you like to listen to another version?

_{9 CRAZY FAN THEORIES ABOUT DISNEY CARTOONS}

Here we need to remember actually the mysterious Rapunzel, the bluebell flower, for which the mother of the heroine had a magical appetite. A delicious flower grows in the witch's garden, so the husband of a woman languishing with desire to taste the plant has to make a deal with the witch: she will let her pick greens for salad, but then she will take the child. You know the continuation, but this alternative version is somewhat less gloomy: Rapunzel was glad to have a guest, and everything happened by mutual agreement. The blinded Gothel prince in the finale accidentally finds his beloved with a child in the forest, and they live happily ever after in his castle. The girl's tears turned out to be magical and healed the prince's eyes. Doesn't it remind you of anything?

Both the early versions of the fairy tale and Andersen's well-known story - they all end very badly for the heroine. The motive of genuine sacrificial love in an ancient fairy tale looked like this: when the Little Mermaid received human legs, each step was accompanied by terrifying pain and a bloody trail. And the prince at that time solved his matrimonial problems through a ball, choosing among the best dancers.

Do I need to specify that the sea maiden, moving with difficulty, failed, and even gathered to take revenge on the offender. With the knife exchanged with the witch, the Little Mermaid was supposed to take the life of the prince, but she did not dare and became sea foam.

Andersen removed the gloomy details about the movement and made two whole endings: about foam and the "daughter of air" who went to heaven. This version is the happiest. Well, apart from Disney's Ariel happy ending, of course.

We complete the frightening tales with a story that did not receive its own cartoon from Disney, but was embodied both in domestic animation (the Soviet "Little Red Riding Hood") and in foreign ("The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood"). Of course, the last mentioned cartoon turns the fairy tale inside out no worse than Shrek, but nevertheless, the classic version of this road from point A to point B with overcoming insidious obstacles is known to everyone.

But not everyone knows that in the series of medieval fairy tales "Little Red Riding Hood" is one of the darkest, full of heavy overtones and detailed themes of werewolf and cannibalism.

Here is the version of the Brothers Grimm: a girl who came to her grandmother, without asking any questions about her size, undressed and lay down next to the wolf. The villain just swallowed it, well, and then the woodcutters came and pulled everyone out. Only now the wolf did not fare well - his belly was sewn up, previously stuffed with stones, after which the antagonist died suddenly.

In an earlier version from the 14th century, everything was much worse: the wolf prepared treats from the grandmother, with which he treated the granddaughter. The grandmother's cat tried to warn the girl, but was cruelly deprived of life by means of a well-placed wooden shoe. The wolf also ate the girl, and together with friends invited to the feast.

But for Charles Perrault, everything ended rather nicely, however, he hints in every possible way that the wolf still managed to have fun with the girl before his death, and the final moral about crafty seducers leads to this. Fortunately, this hint is clear only to adult readers of children's fairy tales.

What was your favorite fairy tale as a child?

Interesting on the topic:
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20 most interesting cut scenes from Disney cartoons

Tchaikovsky. Ballet The Sleeping Beauty

Ballet extravaganza in 3 acts (with prologue and apotheosis).

Composer P. Tchaikovsky, screenwriters (after Ch. Perrault) I. Vsevolozhsky and M. Petipa, choreographer M. Petipa, artists G. Levot, I. Andreev, K. Ivanov, M. Shishkov, M. Bocharov, conductor R. Drigo.

The premiere took place on January 3, 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Actors:

• King Florestan XIV
• Queen
• Princess Aurora, their daughter
• Prince Sheri
• Prince Sharman
• Prince Fleur de Poix
• Prince Fortune
• Catalabute, Chief Butler of the King of Florestan
• Prince Desiree
• Lilac Fairy
• Good Fairies: Canary Fairy, Violante Fairy (violent), Crumb Fairy (breadcrumb scatterer), Candide Fairy (purehearted), Fleur de Farine Fairy (flowering ears fairy)
• Carabosse, evil fairy
• Ladies, lords, pages, hunters, servants, spirits from the retinue of fairies, etc.

The action takes place in a fairyland in fairytale times with an interval of one hundred years.

Prologue. Hall of the palace of King Florestan XIV. The christening of Princess Aurora is celebrated here. Fairy sorceresses are invited, each of them endows her goddaughter with various spiritual qualities. However, the main godmother, the Lilac Fairy, does not have time to approach the cradle, when the most evil and powerful Fairy Carabosse bursts into the hall with a noise. They forgot to invite her, and she is furious! In vain the King and Queen beg her to forgive the mistake of Master of Ceremonies Catalubute. Carabosse only taunts them. “So that the happiness of the princess, which my sisters have bestowed on her, is never interrupted, she will fall into eternal sleep as soon as she pricks her finger.” With these words, the evil fairy utters magic spells. The fun of the triumphant Carabosse and her ugly retinue is interrupted by the Lilac Fairy. She predicts Aurora not eternal, but only a long sleep. “The day will come, the prince will come and wake you up with a kiss on the forehead.” Enraged, Carabosse disappears, and the rest of the fairies surround the cradle.

1. Aurora is 20 years old. The beginning of the holiday in the palace park is overshadowed by a scene with villagers. They found needles banned near the palace. The king wants to punish them severely, but is it worth spoiling the celebration? General fun, dancing peasants. Aurora exit. She dances with four suitors, not giving preference to any of them. Everyone admires the young princess. Aurora notices an old woman with a spindle, curiously snatches it from her hands and, waving it, continues the dance. The sudden pain from the spindle prick frightens the princess. She thrashes from side to side and then falls down, lifeless. Everyone is horrified. The old woman throws off her cloak - this is the triumphant Carabosse. In vain the suitors draw their swords, the fairy disappears. The fountain at the back of the stage is illuminated by magical light, and the Lilac Fairy appears. According to her instructions, the princess is taken to the castle, followed by the courtiers. The sorceress waves her wand and everything freezes. Lilac bushes close the castle, creatures subject to the fairy guard its peace.

2. One hundred years have passed. Prince Desire is hunting on the bank of a wide river. During breakfast in nature, his retinue have fun. Archery, dancing. The prince is tired and orders to continue hunting without him. A luxurious boat appears on the river. From it comes the Lilac Fairy - the godmother of the Prince. Desire confesses to her that his heart is free. By the sign of the fairy wand, the sleeping Aurora is visible in the rock. Together with her friends, the ghost of the princess appears on the stage. With their dances they captivate the young man. The prince is delighted, but the shadow eludes him and disappears into the rock. Desire begs the Lilac Fairy to tell him where to find this celestial being. They sit in the boat and swim. The landscape is getting wilder (panorama). A mysterious castle appears in the light of the moon. The Fairy leads the Prince through the closed gate, sleeping horses and people are visible. Quiet music is heard.

Sleeping Beauty Castle. A layer of dust and cobwebs cover the room where Aurora sleeps surrounded by her parents and retinue. As soon as Desiree kisses the Princess on the forehead, everything changes. The dust of centuries disappears, a fire flares up in the fireplace. The prince begs the awakened father to agree to the marriage with his daughter. “This is her fate,” the King answers and joins the hands of the young.

3. Wedding of Aurora and Desiree. Florestan Palace Esplanade. Entry of the King, Queen, newlyweds with retinue and fairies of Diamonds, Gold, Silver and Sapphires. Heroes of fairy tales march in a large polonaise. Here is Bluebeard and his wife, Puss in Boots, Marquis de Carabas, Golden-haired beauty and Prince Avenant, Donkeyskin and Prince Sharman, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Prince Fortuné. Following are the Blue Bird and Princess Florina, the White Cat, the Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Prince Hohlik and Princess Aime, the Thumb Boy and his brothers, the Ogre and the Ogre, the Carabosse fairy on a wheelbarrow driven by rats, as well as the good fairies led by the Lilac Fairy . A big divertissement where fairies and fairy-tale characters dance. Pas de de Aurora and Desiree. Final common code.

Apotheosis.

* * *

The initiative for the appearance on the St. Petersburg stage of the ballet based on the famous fairy tale by Perrault came from the director of the Imperial Theaters, Ivan Vsevolozhsky. This nobleman was educated in Europe, composed plays, drew well, received a good musical education. In August, Tchaikovsky received a detailed script for the future ballet, which he liked. The script, which in many respects coincided with the final libretto cited above, differed favorably from Perrault's fairy tale in many details: new characters appeared, scenes of action were outlined more advantageously on the stage. The authors of the script (it was unsigned) were Marius Petipa and, probably, the director himself.

In February 1889, Petipa sent Tchaikovsky a detailed order plan for the prologue and all three acts. In this amazing document, the desired music was painted down to the number of measures. It is amazing how the venerable choreographer saw his performance in detail, not yet hearing a single musical phrase, not composing a single movement. For example, Aurora's reaction to an injection was described as follows: “2/4, fast. Terrified, she no longer dances - this is not a dance, but a dizzying, crazy movement, as if from the bite of a tarantula! Finally, she collapses lifeless. This frenzy should last no more than 24 to 32 bars." Tchaikovsky, formally following all the instructions of the choreographer, created a unique composition, "raising the bar" for ballet music for many years to come.

On the cover of the program released for the premiere, it was written: "The content is borrowed from Perrault's fairy tales." Firstly, it was deliberately not indicated by whom it was borrowed, that is, who the author or authors of the script were. Only later did the co-authorship of Petipa and Vsevolozhsky begin to be indicated (the latter also owned sketches for the costumes of the performance, which, apparently, only the initiates should have known). Secondly, among the characters of the final act there are heroes of fairy tales not only by Perrault (from the famous "Puss in Boots" to "Donkey Skin" and "Riquet with a Tuft"), but also Madame d'Onoy (The Blue Bird and Princess Florina, Golden-haired Beauty, Prince Avenant) and Leprince de Beaumont (Beauty and the Beast).

All the best forces of the troupe were busy. Aurora was danced by Carlotta Brianza, one of the Italian ballerinas who served under contract at the Mariinsky Theater in the 1890s, and who were to perform the leading roles in the ballets of Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. Desire - Pavel Gerdt, Lilac Fairy - Maria Petipa, Carabosse - Enrique Cecchetti (Italian artist, choreographer and teacher, who also masterfully performed the part of the Blue Bird). Estimates of the premiere of "Sleeping Beauty" turned out to be different. Notebook balletomanes grumbled that the music was "unsuitable for dancing", that ballet was "a fairy tale for children and old people." However, the theater was filled with other spectators who knew and loved Tchaikovsky's music from his operas and symphonic compositions. During the first two seasons, the ballet was performed about 50 times.

* * *

“The luxurious juicy ballet The Sleeping Beauty has the same meaning in the development of Russian ballet as Ruslan and Lyudmila has in the opera” (Boris Asafiev). Thanks to the music of Tchaikovsky, the "children's" fairy tale became a poem about the struggle between good (the Lilac fairy) and evil (the Carabosse fairy). At the same time, in its mood, The Sleeping Beauty is unique in the composer's work. The ballet, written between the Fifth Symphony and The Queen of Spades - compositions full of fatal beginnings and condensed drama, is full of light and lyrics. It is not for nothing that the Sleeping Beauty is called the ballet symbol of St. Petersburg. The malice and envy of any Carabosse are insignificant in the face of the unreal light of white nights, filled with the smell of lilacs.

The musical material of individual numbers is developed into a wide symphonic canvas. The prologue is monumental and solemn. The first act is the active, dramatic center of the ballet. The second is romantic lyrics, especially impressive in extended musical intervals. The final act is a celebration of triumphant joy. Tchaikovsky's famous waltzes in The Sleeping Beauty are diverse - from the dancing fairies in the prologue to the extensive festive Peisan waltz and the short waltz episode of Aurora's dance with a spindle. It is known that the magnificent music of the ballet went far beyond the stage. The best conductors perform it in concerts and record it on audio CDs. It was not for nothing that the composer, always dissatisfied with himself, wrote in a letter to a friend: “The Sleeping Beauty is perhaps the best of all my compositions.”

Slender in terms of architectonics, the ballet amazes with the splendor of various choreographic colors. At the same time, the designs of the acts are artistically thought out. First, a short pantomime episode (knitters in the first act) or a genre dance (Desire's hunt). This is followed by an extensive dance fragment (the fairy sextet in the prologue, the peasant waltz of the first act, court dances in the second). And, finally, a dance classical ensemble (pas d'axion) - Aurora dancing with four suitors, or a scene of nymphs. Parenthetically, this scene of Desiree's seduction is erroneously called "the dances of the Nereids." Petipa did not have such a name, and could not have, for he knew that Nereids "are found" only in the sea, and not on the banks of the river. In the last act, the inventive genius of Petipa dazzles the audience with a bizarre pattern of diverse dances, the top of which is the solemn pas de deux of the heroes.

As always, the ballerina is at the center of every Petipa performance. The choreographic image of Aurora is characterized by a masterful selection of movements and, at the same time, a rare plastic expressiveness in the dynamics of plot collisions. A young girl, lightly and naively perceiving the world around her, in the first act. A beckoning ghost, summoned from a long-term dream by the Lilac fairy, in the second. The happy princess who found her betrothed is in the finale. It was not for nothing that Petipa was considered a master of female variations. In Sleeping Beauty, these are dancing portraits of good fairies. By tradition, male images, with the exception of the Blue Bird, are less impressive. The choreographer did not consider it necessary, for example, to give Aurora's suitors any dance characteristic, except for the support of the desired princess. In general, The Sleeping Beauty by Petipa-Tchaikovsky is called an "encyclopedia of classical dance."

The stage life of the play at the Mariinsky Theater continued actively into the 20th century. In 1914 it was decided to replace the original scenography, this was entrusted to the famous artist Konstantin Korovin. In 1922/23, when after the turbulent revolutionary years it was necessary to "repair" the ballet, changes were already made to the choreography. In the second act, Fyodor Lopukhov restored the symphonic intermission, composed court dances on the hunt missed by Petipa and the painting "Dream", edited some scenes of the final act. Almost all of this later on came to be seen as inseparable from Petipa's choreography.

In the post-war years, the splendor of Sleeping Beauty seemed to have faded. In 1952, Konstantin Sergeev carried out a major choreographic and director's revision of the old ballet, "aimed at a more complete and profound disclosure of the ideological and artistic concept of the composer and director. " The images of the Lilac Fairy, who parted with high-heeled shoes and a magic wand, and Desire, who received new variations in the second and third acts, became more danceable. Some numbers have been re-staged: the entrance of the fairies in the prologue, the farandole of the second act, the procession of the characters and the sextet of the fairies in the last act. The stylish scenery and costumes of Simon Virsaladze evoked admiration.

In 1999, the Mariinsky Theater decided on a seemingly crazy idea - to reconstruct the Sleeping Beauty from 1890. By this time, the collection of the former chief director of the pre-revolutionary Mariinsky Theater Nikolai Sergeev, now stored at Harvard University, became available. Sergei Vikharev, choreographer and director of the reconstruction, wrote: “When I got acquainted with Nikolai Sergeyev’s recordings, it became clear that The Sleeping Beauty can be restored as close as possible to Petipa’s original. And most importantly - dance combinations . .. ".

The scenery and costumes were restored based on materials from St. Petersburg museums. The performance turned out to be festively bright, a real “grand feast” for the eyes, but rather contradictory.

The stage history of Sleeping Beauty began abroad in 1921 in London. Diaghilev decided to show Europe an example of the old Petersburg school that formed the foundation of his troupe. The scenery and costumes (more than 100!) for the luxurious production were commissioned by the famous Lev Bakst. True, Diaghilev treated the work of Tchaikovsky and Petipa in his own way. He deleted from the score everything that seemed boring to him and supplemented it with other music by the same composer. He asked Igor Stravinsky to re-orchestrate something.

Nikolai Sergeev showed the choreography to the troupe, but then Bronislava Nijinska supplemented it with new numbers. The most famous of them - "The Dance of the Three Ivans" - crowned the divertissement of fairy tales. The premiere was danced by Petrograd guest performer Olga Spesivtseva and former premier of the Mariinsky Theater Pyotr Vladimirov. Diaghilev invited Carlotta Brianza, the first performer of the part of Aurora in 1890, to play the role of Carabosse. The troupe, despite 105 performances, failed to justify the colossal expense. The investor took all the scenography on account of the debt, and Bakst received his fee only through the court.

The time of big plot ballets in the West came later. Nowadays, most of the major ballet companies have The Sleeping Beauty in their repertoire in very different stage and choreographic versions.

A. Degen, I. Stupnikov

History of creation

Director of the Imperial Theaters I. Vsevolozhsky (1835-1909), an admirer of Tchaikovsky’s work, who highly appreciated Swan Lake, in 1886 tried to interest the composer in a new ballet theme . He proposed the plots of "Ondine" and "Salambo". The composer, who was then working on the opera The Enchantress, immediately refused Salammbo, but Ondine interested him: an early opera was written on this plot, and Tchaikovsky was not averse to returning to it. He even asked Brother Modest, a well-known librettist, to take over the script. However, presented by M. Tchaikovsky (1850-1916), the variant was rejected by the theater management, and Vsevolozhsky mastered another idea - to create a magnificent performance in the style of ballets at the court of Louis XIV with a quadrille from Perrault's fairy tales in the divertissement of the last act. On May 13, 1888, he wrote to Tchaikovsky: “I decided to write a libretto for “La belle au bous dormant” based on a fairy tale by Perrault. I want to make a mise en scene in the style of Louis XIV. Here a musical fantasy can play out and you can compose melodies in the spirit of Lully, Bach, Rameau, etc., etc. If you like the idea, why not take up composing music? In the last act, we need a quadrille of all the fairy tales of Perrault - there should be a cat in boots, a boy with a finger, and Cinderella, and a Bluebeard, etc. The script was written by him in close collaboration with M. Petipa (1818-1910) based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault (1628-1697) "The Beauty of the Sleeping Forest" from his collection "Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Past Morals with Teachings" (1697). Having received it in the second half of August, Tchaikovsky, in his words, was fascinated and delighted. “This suits me perfectly, and I do not want anything better than to write music for this,” he answered Vsevolozhsky.

Tchaikovsky composed with passion. On January 18, 1889, he completed the outlines of the prologue and two acts, work on the third act was in the spring and summer, partly during the long journey undertaken by the composer along the route Paris - Marseille - Constantinople - Tiflis (Tbilisi) - Moscow. In August, he was already finishing the instrumentation of the ballet, which was eagerly awaited in the theater: rehearsals were already underway there. The composer's work proceeded in constant interaction with the great choreographer Marius Petipa, who constituted an entire era in the history of Russian ballet (he served in Russia from 1847 until his death). Petipa provided the composer with a detailed order plan. As a result, a completely new type of ballet emerged in terms of musical embodiment, far removed from the more traditional in musical and dramatic terms, although beautiful in terms of music, Swan Lake. The Sleeping Beauty has become a genuine musical and choreographic symphony, in which music and dance are merged into one.

“Each act of the ballet was like a part of a symphony, closed in form and could exist separately,” writes the well-known ballet researcher V. Krasovskaya. But each expressed one of the sides of the general idea, and therefore, as part of a symphony, could be fully appreciated only in connection with other acts. The stage action of "Sleeping Beauty" outwardly repeated the plan of the script. But next to the climaxes of the plot and, in fact, crowding them out, new peaks arose - musical and dance action .... The Sleeping Beauty is one of the outstanding phenomena in the history of world choreography of the 19th century. This work, the most perfect in Petipa's work, sums up the difficult, not always successful, but persistent searches of the choreographer in the field of ballet symphonism. To a certain extent, it also sums up the entire path of the choreographic art of the 19th century. ..”

The premiere of The Sleeping Beauty took place at the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theater on January 3 (15), 1890. Throughout the 20th century, the ballet was staged more than once on many stages, and the performance was always based on Petipa's choreography, which became a classic, although each of the choreographers who turned to The Sleeping Beauty brought something of his own personality.

Music

Despite the fact that The Sleeping Beauty is a French fairy tale, its music, due to its spontaneous emotionality and penetrating lyricism, is deeply Russian. It is distinguished by spirituality, light romance, clarity and festivity. In its character, it is close to one of Tchaikovsky's opera gems, Iolante. The music was based on the opposition and symphonic development of the themes of Lilac and Carabosse as antitheses of Good and Evil.

The Grand Waltz of Act I is one of the brightest numbers in the ballet. The famous musical Panorama of Act II illustrates the path of the magic boat. The musical interlude, connecting the first and second scenes of Act II, is a violin solo intonation of beautiful melodies of love and dreams. The gentle sound of the violin is answered by the oboe and the English horn. In Act III, Pas de deux of Aurora and the Prince is a great Adagio that sounds like the apotheosis of love.

L. Mikheeva

The circumstances that accompanied the production of Swan Lake could not help but have a cooling effect on Tchaikovsky. Only thirteen years later, he again turned to the ballet genre, having received an order to compose music for the ballet The Sleeping Beauty based on Perrault's fairy tale for a production at the Mariinsky Theater. The new ballet was created in completely different conditions. By the end of the 80s, Tchaikovsky, who was in the period of the highest creative maturity, achieved universal recognition in his homeland and in a number of foreign countries as one of the most outstanding Russian composers. The success enjoyed by many of his works on the concert stage and in the opera prompted the director of the imperial theaters, I. A. Vsevolozhsky, to turn to him to create a richly furnished, fascinating performance that amazes the audience with enchanting luxury, variety and brightness of colors. Showing special concern for the staging level of the performances of the largest metropolitan theater, Vsevolozhsky wanted to impress the audience with novelty and brilliance in The Sleeping Beauty, surpassing anything that she could see before. For this purpose, ordinary ordinary ballet music was not suitable and the participation of a composer of Tchaikovsky's scale was needed.

The St. Petersburg Ballet had a strong troupe headed by one of the most prominent choreographers of the 19th century, Marius Petipa. A representative of the classical school, not prone to any bold innovations, he was not only a brilliant master with great imagination and delicate taste, but also a thoughtful and interesting artist. “One of the great merits of Petipa,” the researcher writes, “was his desire to return to classical dance, at least the first plots, his former expressiveness and psychological richness, this is perhaps the most valuable property of the old ballet, long ago reduced to nothing ".

Tchaikovsky wrote the music for The Sleeping Beauty in close collaboration with the scriptwriter and director Petipa, who, taking advantage of Vsevolozhsky's general wishes, developed a detailed ballet plan indicating the nature and quantity (size and number of bars) of music for each individual number. Tchaikovsky tried to take into account all the instructions contained in Petipa's plan with maximum accuracy, but at the same time he did not just fulfill the wishes of the theater director and choreographer, but independently interpreted the plot, creating an internally complete, holistic work permeated with the unity and continuity of symphonic development. Sometimes the composer went against the intentions of the script writers. Vsevolozhsky imagined the music of The Sleeping Beauty as an elegant stylization in the spirit of the 17th and early 18th centuries. Addressing Tchaikovsky with a proposal to take on this work, he wrote: “Here a musical fantasy can break out and compose melodies in the spirit of Lully, Bach, Rameau, etc., etc.” However, Tchaikovsky resorts to such stylization only in a few separate episodes, but in general his music is distinguished by extraordinary richness, fullness and brightness of colors, using all the riches of harmony and orchestral writing of the second half of the 19th century.

Often the symphonist's creative thought led him to such an expansion of scale and complexity of texture that it puzzled the choreographer, who was not accustomed to such developed musical forms and such a degree of "densification" of the material. A number of eyewitnesses testify to the difficulties that Petipa experienced in obtaining finished pieces of music from Tchaikovsky (“Tchaikovsky’s music created considerable difficulties for Petipa,” writes one of the memoirists. “He was used to working with full-time ballet composers - my grandfather Puni and Minkus, who were endlessly changing the music of one or another number <...> Therefore, it was rather difficult for Petipa to work on The Sleeping Beauty. He admitted this to me too.”) . “Petipa,” notes N. I. Nosilov, “was the greatest master of composing ballet dances to non-dance music, but he had not yet had to deal with the disclosure of the ideas and images embedded in the symphony by choreographic means.” Therefore, with all the brilliance of the production, carried out by a venerable choreographer, she still did not reveal Tchaikovsky's scores in all the depth and significance of its content.

For Petipa, The Sleeping Beauty was a fairy-tale choreographic act, which made it possible to develop a wide colorful panorama of pictures and images captivating the imagination, to demonstrate all the richness of the means of classical and characteristic dance. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, needed the main motive, a through guiding idea that unites all this motley series of scenes and episodes. Laroche found a mythological basis in the fairy-tale story about the sleeping beauty widespread among many peoples - "one of the countless incarnations of the earth, resting in winter and waking up from the kiss of spring." A similar thought was expressed by the inspector of St. Petersburg theaters, V.P. Pogozhev, in a letter to Tchaikovsky dated September 24, 1888, when the idea of ​​The Sleeping Beauty was only maturing with the composer: “The program, in my opinion, is very successful; sleep and awakening (winter and spring) - a magnificent canvas for a musical picture. Perhaps these words turned out to be a hint to Tchaikovsky to some extent and strengthened his decision to write music on a plot that he did not like very much at first: winter and spring, sleep and awakening, life and death - these antitheses often converge in folk art and are interchangeable. Such an understanding of the plot made it possible to connect it with the main problems of Tchaikovsky's work.

The images of the evil fairy Carabosse and the good, beautiful fairy Lilac personify the antagonistic principles in The Sleeping Beauty, the struggle of which determines both the eternal cycle in nature and the fate of human life. Both of them are characterized by constant musical themes, which receive a wide symphonic development in the ballet. These two themes are in sharp contrast. The theme of the fairy Carabosse is distinguished by its sharpness, "prickly" pattern, harmonic dissonance and mobility of the tonal plan (Asafiev draws attention to the “method of mixing tonal colors” used here by Tchaikovsky, which was found by Glinka in the flight scene of Chernomor from Ruslan and Lyudmila.) .

The Lilac Fairy is depicted by a smooth, unhurriedly unfolding melodious barcarolle type melody with evenly pulsating accompaniment, evoking a feeling of clear serene peace.

In contrast to the imperceptibly changeable Carabosse theme, it steadily retains its melodic pattern and undergoes only external textural changes.

The finale of the prologue and the first act, as well as the large picture of the Lilac Fairy and the Prince in the second act, are the dramatic knots, the centers of interweaving of the main acting forces. The unexpected appearance of the fairy Carabosse in the prologue at the celebration of the christening of the newborn Princess Aurora and her ominous prediction about the eternal sleep of the princess causes general confusion. In this scene, the theme of Carabosse is widely developed, taking on grotesque outlines; jerky sounds of woodwinds give it a special deathly cold hard flavor. But after this, a light, bewitchingly affectionate theme of the Lilac fairy appears; the dream will not last forever, she says, and Aurora will wake up from the kiss of the handsome prince. The prologue ends with the triumphant sound of this theme, in which only separate fragments of the Carabosse theme, leaving the palace in anger, are woven.

The finale of the first act is more dramatic, where the forces of good and evil, personified by two powerful fairies, clash again. Immediately preceding the finale is the dance of Aurora, already a young beauty, whose hands are sought by noble cavaliers. Graceful, slightly flirtatious dance (Designated in the score as a variation of Aurora No. 8 in.) begins in the movement of a leisurely waltz, but gradually becomes faster and more impetuous. Noticing an old woman with a spindle, Aurora grabs it and accidentally pricks her finger: a formidable prediction has come true: Aurora is spinning in despair, bleeding ("Danse vertige" - a dizzying dance or dance of madness), and, finally, falls dead. At this moment, the Carabosse theme resounds menacingly on the horns and trombones in a rhythmic increase of (Attention is drawn to the similarity of this variant with the beginning of development in the first part of the Sixth Symphony.) ,

expressing the triumph and jubilation of the evil sorceress. The horror and despair of all those present subside when the Lilac Fairy appears, accompanied by her leitmotif in the same thick and bright key of E major, in which it is set out in the orchestral introduction and finale of the prologue. With a wave of a magic wand, the fairy plunges everyone into a deep sleep, and the “sleep chords” sound powerful and commanding in the orchestra, which are nothing more than a softened version of the Carabosse fairy theme.

The second act, consisting of two scenes, is a tightly fused chain of dance and pantomime scenes that directly transition into one another. An atmosphere of goodness, love and joy dominates here - evil lurks, only occasionally reminding of itself, and by the end of the action it is completely defeated. After the first divertissement scenes of hunting, games and dances of Prince Desire and his court, some kind of magical light seems to spread over the stage, leading to a mysterious unknown distance. From the moment the Lilac Fairy appears, the color of the music changes, becomes indefinitely shimmering, fantastic - she awakens a thirst for love in the prince and shows him a vision of Aurora. The lyrical Adagio of Aurora and Desiree with an expressive cello solo, the scene of the prince’s passionate plea to introduce him to the beauty, the panorama of the journey of Desiree and the fairies sailing on a boat to the enchanted kingdom, and, finally, the dream picture, remarkable for the subtlety of orchestral writing, are the most important strongholds of everything this big stretch of action (The score also contains an orchestral intermission with a large violin solo, connecting the two scenes of the second act, but it is usually omitted during the performance of the ballet. Meanwhile, this intermission is important for the development of the internal action: an expressive lyrical theme close to the theme of love from The Queen of Spades ”, expresses the strength of the Prince’s passion, forcing him to break through all obstacles and dangers to the beauty that captivated him.) . Once again, but quietly, muffled, “chords of sleep” sound from the woodwinds, fragments of the themes of the Carabosse fairy and the Lilac fairy are heard, and all this is as if shrouded in a light transparent haze. The kiss of the prince, making his way through the fog and dense thickets of the forest, awakens Aurora from a long sleep: love and courage overcome the evil spell of sorcery (The moment of "breaking the spell" is marked by the tam-tom strike, the only one in the entire score.) . This, in essence, ends the development of the action - the final third act (the wedding of Aurora and Desiree) is a large luxurious divertissement.

The unity and integrity of the symphonic concept are combined in The Sleeping Beauty with an extraordinary richness and variety of dance forms. In every action we find a kind of parade of dances that create a colorful backdrop for the unfolding of the dramatic plot. Separate dances are combined into larger structures according to the principle of rhythmic and expressive contrast, forming cyclic forms of the suite type. In itself, this principle was not new for classical ballet, but in The Sleeping Beauty the choreographer and composer abandoned the impersonal general dance formulas that have no connection with a particular situation and therefore are easily transferable from one work to another: in each a certain characteristic image is captured from the dances. Such are the variations of the fairies in the prologue, the rural dance and the "waltz of reconciliation" in the first act, a group of ancient dances (minuet, gavotte, farandole) in the second act, and almost the entire third act - this, according to Asafiev's definition, "a holiday that constantly unfolds in its magical flowering dance."

A series of miniature characteristic scenes featuring familiar characters from Perrault's tales are remarkable. Genuine masterpieces of brilliant sound-painting skills are such episodes as “Puss in Boots and a White Cat” with “meowing” oboes and bassoons, “The Blue Bird and Princess Florina”, where the “overflows” of the flute and clarinet create the illusion of singing some unprecedented outlandish birds , “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf”, in the music of which one can hear the timid steps of a little girl, turning into a quick hasty run, and a formidable wolf roar (tirats of violas and cellos). At the end of the third act, after the festive procession of fairy-tale characters ends, the main characters Aurora and Desire reappear. Their Adagio (followed by obligatory quick variations) sounds light, even triumphant, expressing the joy and fullness of the achieved happiness.

The premiere of The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theater on January 3, 1890 became an event in the artistic life of the Russian capital. Despite the usual attacks of conservative criticism, the novelty and scale of the phenomenon were obvious to everyone. Evaluating the music of the ballet, Laroche put it on a par with the best works of Tchaikovsky as “the highest point to which the Glinka school has so far reached, the point at which the school is already beginning to free itself from Glinka and open up new horizons that have not yet been clarified ".

The departure from the usual clichés, the unusualness of the performance that presented itself to their ears and eyes, most of all worried balletomaniacs, who criticized the production of The Sleeping Beauty precisely from these positions. At the same time, Tchaikovsky's ballet evoked an enthusiastic reaction from the figures of the younger generation, who were destined in the near future to bring a new refreshing stream to Russian art. Young A. N. Benois, having visited one of the first performances of The Sleeping Beauty, was especially delighted with the music of Tchaikovsky, finding in it “ the same that I was always somehow waiting for ”, “something infinitely close, dear, something that I would call my music”. “The admiration for The Sleeping Beauty,” he wrote already in his declining years, “returned me in general to ballet, to which I had cooled off, and with this ignited passion I infected all my friends, who gradually became“ real balletomaniacs ”. Thus, one of the main conditions was created that in a few years moved us ourselves to activity in the same field, and this activity brought us world success.

This confession by one of S. P. Diaghilev’s closest associates in the organization of the Russian Seasons in Paris, who directly collaborated with Stravinsky and other composers of the same circle, is convincing evidence of the outstanding role played by The Sleeping Beauty in the renewal of the ballet theater in turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Y. Keldysh

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Publications

Dead dead: about the new production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Vienna Opera0003

The Sleeping Beauty in a new edition by John Neumeier 01/16/2022 at 21:35

34th Nureyev Festival: from classical to neoclassical 06/05/2021 at 13:36

Tour of the Ballet Company of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theater in St.

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