SLEEPING BEAUTY Comes to Den Norske Opera Next Month

Den Norske Opera presents Sleeping Beauty, a new classic full-length ballet by Christian Spuck. Dancing on toes to Tchaikovsky in a fanciful version of the fairytale.

In this enchanting and beautiful version of Sleeping Beauty, Christian Spuck takes a fresh look at the story. Aurora, the fairies, the royal couple and a castle are all included, but the characters have been rewritten - and the normally wicked fairy Carabosse has plenty of reason to feel despair. "Full of wit, irony, parody and deeper meaning" is how the magazine tanznetz described the ballet.

We are all familiar with the story. During the christening of Princess Aurora, the uninvited Carabosse casts a horrible spell: on her 16th birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel's spindle and die. Fortunately, the Lilac Fairy manages to weave her own spell, so that the princess is to sleep for 100 years, to be awakened by a prince.

The super duo of Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa created the ballet Sleeping Beauty. The story itself originates from Charles Perrault's fairytale from the 1600s. The curtain went up on the ballet in St. Petersburg in 1890 for the first time - and the rest is ballet history. To this very day, Sleeping Beauty continues to rank among the top ten most popular ballets and there are few who would disagree that Tchaikovsky's version is the best ballet music ever written.

A magician with dance steps

German choreographer Spuck is known as a master of creating narrative ballets and is behind such Norwegian National Ballet successes as Anna Karenina and Woyzeck. His new Sleeping Beauty was performed live several times in Zurich before the theatre was forced to close due to the pandemic. A Norwegian audience can now finally enjoy this ballet, a real feast for both the eyes and ears.

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