ABSTRACT
THE 3 January 1890 première of Sleeping Beauty and the gala dress rehearsal which preceded it by one day could not have been more auspicious, falling as they did on the first days of the nineteenth century’s final decade. The ballet about a princess who awakens to find herself transported to the next century bode well for those who sought parallels between life and art. That the princess’ name was Aurora and the action of the ballet moved from an atmosphere of social upheaval (the wicked fairy Carabosse not only intrudes upon the ballet’s court festivities, she brings them to an end) to a dazzling Versailles-like court could only drive these meanings deeper. Ironically, the Aurora that would play a decisive role in Russia’s fate was a battleship, not a princess, and the new dawn she heralded bore considerably more resemblance to the epoch of Louis XVI than of Louis XIV.
