1921 – Serge Digahilev’s Ballets Russes performs The Sleeping Princess

The Sleeping Beauty (also performed as The Sleeping Princess)

Often considered Marius Petipa’s masterpiece, The Sleeping Beauty, to music composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was first performed in 1890 by the Russian Imperial Ballet at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Based on the fairytale by Charles Perrault, the ballet made a huge impact on Russian artistic circles at the time, and later inspired Serge Diaghilev to produce the work (which he titled The Sleeping Princess) at the Alhambra Theatre, London, in 1921 (with stage design by Léon Bakst). Although a financial flop for Diaghilev, the ballet, once again, made an immense impression in Britain, this time to a new generation of balletomanes.