The Sleeping Beauty

Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato chose Tchaikovsky's popular 1890 fairy-tale perennial as his initial “classical” ballet in 2011, during his tenure as artistic director of St. Petersburg's Mikhailovsky Theatre (Duato was the first Westerner for more than a century to hold such a post in a major Russian company). The reaction was mixed, with some criticizing his shortening of the score and the alterations to the original libretto. But Duato brought this altered version to the Berlin Staatsballett, where he assumed the directorship in 2014, and it works very well. The sets and costumes designed by Angelica Atlagic are wonderfully evocative, while Iana Salenko and Marian Walter as Princess Aurora and Prince Désiré are models of controlled grace. Particularly riveting is the treatment of the villainous Carabosse (Rishat Yulbarisov), who sashays about in a pitch-black evening gown surrounded by a sextet of diminutive dancers—decked out in shiny masks and wetsuits—who slither in and out of various formations as they creep along beside her. The Deutsche Oper orchestra delivers Tchaikovsky's melodies with verve and feeling under Robert Reimer's baton, and the parade of dancers who perform the various specialty numbers in the third-act divertissement at the royal couple's wedding party are all crowd-pleasers. Those who expected that Duato, who is known for his work in contemporary ballet, would radically rethink this chestnut may be disappointed, as his version of Sleeping Beauty, while adding a few new moves, mostly follows the traditional approach, but does so nicely. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM stereo on DVD, and DTS-HD 5.1 and PCM stereo on Blu-ray, this is recommended. (F. Swietek)