A Fairy Tale Ending

"Yes, everything is beautiful at the ballet" . . . .

We ordered tickets to see Sleeping Beauty the ballet at the State Opera House and Monday night was the night.  We got dressed up and walked to the theater on what we thought would be a short little jaunt, 45 minutes later we made it!  Thankfully I learned  how to walk on cobblestones in heels while living in Rennes (This of course is Sarah, with the heels, not that I needed to clarify) .

The Opera House was magnificent inside and we had tickets for one of the boxes.  This production of Sleeping Beauty was a new, shortened and modernized version of the original ballet. It was meant to show the fight of fear vs love rather than good vs evil.  It was also designed to be more child friendly to get kids interested in the ballet.  Most interestingly (for the two Finns), was the producer originally made these changes for a production in Finland and that several people involved in the production were from Finland.

The first two acts focused on the curse put on Sleeping Beauty on her 16th birthday when she pricked her finger.  We enjoyed these first two acts, however the lead seemed a bit nervous and stiff.  The final two acts however were magnificent.  We were very impressed with the male leads who really stood out in the second half.  The dancing, as it always is with ballet, was a thing of beauty.

The original choreographer, Petipa, gave Tchaikovsky specific instructions regarding tempo, number of measures, and even instrumentation when composing the music for Sleeping Beauty.  Apparently, when the princess pricked her finger, the instructions were “the blood flowed in 8 bars of largo”.  Tchaikovsky didn’t feel stifled by these instructions, but found it more results oriented.  That’s a partnership.  

We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel, since we weren’t up for the 45 minute walk.  We are not good at negotiating pricing (at least on a personal level), so we were charged three times the amount as our taxi ride from the airport to the city.  Next time . . . 

Sleeping Beauty though, what a wonderful way to close our trip to Prague.