The Sleeping Beauty
Choreography · Marius Petipa (1890)
music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Cursed at birth by the vengeful fairy Carabosse to die by pricking her finger, the infant Princess Aurora is instead granted a reprieve by the Lilac Fairy: she will fall into a hundred-year sleep, to be broken only by a prince's kiss. On her sixteenth birthday the curse is fulfilled, and Aurora, along with the entire royal court, sleeps for a century behind an enchanted forest. A young Prince Désiré, led by the Lilac Fairy after glimpsing a vision of Aurora while hunting, finds the sleeping castle, wakes her with a kiss, and the couple's wedding is celebrated with a grand procession of fairy-tale guests.