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With its story of reawakening, Sleeping Beauty might be seen as the ideal Easter ballet-but it wasn't intended that way! It received its premiere on January 3 (Julian/Russian calendar)/17 (Gregorian/Western calendar). Sleeping Beauty was listed as a "ballet-féerie" or "fairy" or "enchantment ballet" and in it, choreographer Marius Petipa recreated the 18th-century grand ballet du court, descendant of the kind of court entertainment that had been beloved of Louis XIV. (Please note - King Florestan is not the XIVth for nothing!)In Sleeping Beauty, Petipa celebrated the ballets popular in Paris before the French Revolution, and also celebrated the glory and rightness of autocracy. Russia was the last truly autocratic empire of the modern world in 1890. Reforms instituted by Tsar Alexander II had ended up getting that unfortunate Tsar assassinated, and succeeded by his son, Alexander III, who, understandably, cracked down even more tightly on Russian society in order to crush out the dissident voices supporting democratic reform. This repression, and the building of court structures to "insulate" the Tsar from harm is eerily reminiscent of the King's attempts to save Princess Aurora from the curse of Carabosse.
Sleeping Beauty also believes in a kindly and generous Destiny, in the person of the Lilac Fairy. She may have worked everything out in advance, but she must take an active part in making the events she foretold come to pass. So Sleeping Beauty is also about Destiny and, again, Dynasty. As Alexandra Danilva pointed out, it is not a love story, but the story of an arranged marriage that saved a childless dynasty--surely an allegory anyone who followed the fortunes of the Romanovs could appreciate.
Beauty, if we follow the balletmaster's original plan, also believes that hard feelings can be smoothed over, and former enemies placated. For example, when the women with the knitting needles are found in Act I, the King sentences them to death, but the intercession of kindly Royalty (in the original the Princes, now usually the Queen) saves them. Even the seemingly worst may be forgiven! According to the original plan, even Carabosse is invited to the wedding, and in point of fact takes an honored place in leading the Good Fairies from the Prologue onstage (the Lilac Fairy is last, naturally).
Sleeping Beauty has inspired more artists influential in the fortunes of ballet than any other work. Diaghilev and his whole generation of artistically inclined young men were enchanted by the production and its unity of the arts. The concept of "total art" became the cornersone of Diaghilev's aesthetic in the Ballet Russe, which sparked the rebirth of ballet in Western Europe. Diaghilev's production of The Sleeping Princess inspired countless British dancers and was the reason Ninette DeValois chose to found a great state ballet company rather than a travelling Ballet Russe-type one. When the Sadler's Wells Ballet brought her production of The Sleeping Beauty to America in 1949, it not only made the company's reputation, but inspired yet another wave of young artists.
The sense of wholeness and harmony, of symmetry and putting things right in The Sleeping Beauty contributed to one of the most perfect expressions of classicism that exist in ballet. The final Apotheosis, which showed Apollo, the Sun God, surrounded by the fairies, like much of the ballet, had both artistic and political references. Louis XIV, father of the French Academy, if not ballet itself, had danced the role of Apollo (hence his nickname, "the Sun King"). Louis, looking down on the court onstage and the Court in the Czar's box, was the apex of a formidable triangle: the Sun King, the Czar, and Russian classical ballet. Ballet was a grand art form with deep roots in Western culture (which Russia was always trying to join, when it wasn't rebelling against it). It was now also a Russian art. Louis's presence was a signal that the Czar and his family would prevail. At its first performance, Sleeping Beauty was a very comforting fairy tale for troubled adults.