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"VERY NICE!!!!!"
The libretto was in place, the music was composed, the costume designs were well on their way to completion, and thus, The Sleeping Beauty entered active production in early 1889. And in so doing, it provides us with one of the more complete stories of the workings and reworkings of the Maryinsky Ballet when involved in the creation of a major new work. Popular tastes were going to have to be addressed if the production were to have any chance of a success, and since the opening of private theaters in Russia, the foreign dancer was well-attended in the land. At first it was thought that a very good result could be had in signing Virginia Zucchi to create the title role, but Zucchi had proved temperamental, even bad-tempered in dancing roles in the Imperial Theaters; it was with a great deal of relief that management could turn to a dancer unfamiliar to Petersburg audiences, but with a record of success with Russian audiences-the notoriously tough Moscow! This dancer was Carlotta Brianza.The rehearsals began with Petipa and Tchaikovsky working very hard on refining the ideas which the balletmaster had originally written out for the composer. Tchaikovsky was not terribly ruffled by Petipa's instructions, deeming them little more than advisory. He often did not do as he had been bidden, and the rehearsal period was the choreographer's time to demonstrate that he had meant business about what he wanted! Of course, he was not hidebound, and some of Tchaikovsky's ideas appealed to him, and they stayed, no matter what the scenario said. Give-and-take was the rule in this rehearsal period, with the entire artistic staff functioning as a team, and creating art successfully, by committee.
Petipa addressed the issue of further casting, on the level beneath that of the stars (ever-faithful, ever-popular Pavel Gerdt was a natural for the Prince) by inviting the sensational Enrico Cecchetti to add his inimitable mime ability and virtuoso technique to the roles of Carabosse and the Bluebird, respectively. Cecchetti had danced at the Maryinsky before and was well-liked in Petersburg. He had an unusually large number of featured dancers to cast, given a pas de six in the prologue, interim dances in the hunting scene, and the great divertissement in the last act, and all were filled from Maryinsky resources. The only cavil that some seem to have had with his casting seem to have stemmed from apparent nepotism. The Lilac Fairy, a plum role, was given to his daughter, Marie. Now, Marie was not a very accomplished classical dancer, but her mime was very strong indeed, and perhaps he thought that he could get away with it, but lingering stories exist of the grumbling that existed over this one bit of favoritism. In fact, Marie was to appear in a tutu in the prologue, dancing a variation notoriously easy, while in the first and subsequent acts, she appeared wearing a costume described as a "chemise", a sort of nightgowny thing, and wearing heeled pumps. In the 1970s, when the Kirov was starting to get its archives under control for the first time in years, a photograph of Marie surfaced, showing her in the post-prologue costume. Several companies responded immediately to this new information, not waiting for the rest of the story to emerge-they immediately upped the number of good fairies in the prologue from six to seven!
Petipa also was being influenced in the composition of the dances by his avocations. While arranging the pas de six, the balletmaster attended a popular series of scientific lectures, and one featured a large static- electricity generator which charged batteries, deflected compasses, and did all those electric things that had been entertaining folks since the days of Benjamin Franklin nearly 150 years earlier. (Franklin read with interest of the Petersburger who attempted his kite-flying in a thunderstorm and was killed as a result. "Better him than me" was the attitude, for Franklin had never once performed the experiment!) One moment in the demonstration came when the lecturer, well-insulated from the ground, extended a finger toward the generator's discharge end, and a large, noisy, showy, but harmless spark jumped from the latter to the former. Eureka! The "Finger Variation" for fairy Violente was born!
As the rehearsals progressed, other structural changes were admitted. The beautiful entr'acte (intended for Maryinsky concertmaster Leopold Auer) that Tchaikovsky composed to bridge the Panorama scene with the awakening was cut in order to make the work shorter. The great march which opens Act III has penciled into the margin in Petipa's hand, "Cut the march. Everybody's onstage. It's too long!" So, measures 65-72 and 81-8 and their repeats were out! For some reason, the sarabande intended to be danced by quadrilles of Turks, Ethiopians, Africans, and American Indians in the style of the ballet de cour changed the middle two races into Romans, Persians, and (east) Indians. Probably this change reflects what costumes were available to "borrow" from other productions. Petipa appears to have also listened to his dancers. As originally scheduled, the Bluebird and Princess Florine and Cinderella and Prince Fortune' were to dance a pas de quatre to the music now well-known as the "Bluebird pas de deux". Cecchetti is said to have leaned on Petipa a bit to expand his role and give him a solo variation in a full pas de deux. The choreographer approved of the idea, and switched off poor Cinderella and her prince to a comic duet which has been lost except to notation. The Princess Florine and her pet Bluebird, however....
For all the unity of composition of the other aspects of the production, it must have been at least interesting to watch the scenery being put together, for no fewer than five designers are listed as originators. At least one of these designers, Ivanov, was commander of the Finnish Guards, whose soldiers were routinely used by the Maryinsky as stagehands. George Balanchine remembered them forming up to march off after performances of Le Corsaire, where they manhandled the shipwreck scene to memorable effect! With all the great popularity of Beauty today, it seems odd that it should have met with such a namby-pamby acceptance at its premiere on January 3rd (Julian-Russian)/15th (Gregorian-Western), 1890. While it wasn't disliked, it was damned with faint praise by press and public alike. Tchaikovsky's diary recalled that when presented to Tsar Alexander III, his Majesty had complimented the composer, "Very nice!!!!!(5 exclamation points in the original)