Sleeping beauty

Ballet

Cast

Presentation

Homepage Sleeping beauty

Cast

Corinne and Gilles Benizio, also known as Shirley and Dino Director and Performers

Philippe Lafeuille Choreography

Louis-Ferdinand Hérold Music

Orchestre national d’Île-de-France

Hervé Niquet Conductor

Presentation

It is indeed the famous tale by Charles Perrault that inspired the French composer Louis-Ferdinand Hérold (a contemporary of Beethoven) in 1829 to compose the music for a ballet at the Paris Opera.

Sixty years later, Tchaikovsky would compose, based on the same story, the music for a ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg—a production that became legendary in Russian history, with choreography by Petipa.

But let’s return to the lesser-known French version…

It was a “ballet-pantomime-fairy tale,” a large-scale dance work (four acts) in which the characters were portrayed by the star dancers. Unlike opera, no one sings; the story is told through the gestures and facial expressions (pantomime) of the dancers.

Hérold’s music is no longer part of modern concert repertoires, a situation that Hervé Niquet aims to rectify by staying completely faithful to the original music and all the details of the score.

However, the dance portion, choreographed by Philippe Lafeuille, does not seek historical accuracy. Created in 2011, his production plays with the style of a parody, twisting the plot and turning the romantic ballet into a cheeky farce, much like the offbeat and humorous universe embodied by Shirley and Dino.

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