Ballets
Peggy Reynolds looks at four favourite ballets.
1: Sleeping Beauty. At the christening of the Princess Aurora. everyone celebrates and all the fairies bestow gifts on her. But then Carabosse, Aurora's godmother, arrives - she was not invited and takes her revenge by cursing the Princess: she will grow up, but then she will prick her finger and die. The Lilac Fairy, who has not yet given her present, cannot revoke the curse, but mitigates it: Aurora will not die, but will fall asleep for one hundred years. Aurora does indeed grow up into a beautiful woman, and at her birthday celebrations accepts a spindle from an old woman. She pricks her finger and falls into a deep sleep. Music in this programme is taken from the recording of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty by the Kirov
Orchestra, conductor Valery Gergiev.