What is the best Blu-ray of The Sleeping Beauty ? In March 2021 we are lucky to have 6 Blu-ray versions of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty. Three of these are graded A+ and one is graded A!
The best remains the A+ rated Bolshi Ballet Blu-ray Sleeping Beauty published in 2012, which also got the 💓 award from this website. This was the first production done at the Bolshoi after the Russians spent an estimated billion dollars on the renovation of the theatre building. It has what is perhaps the grandest ballet sets and costumes created since the abdication of the Russian Tsar in 1917. The Bolshi also seems to have 2 or even 3 times more dancers than other ballet companies, many of whom are mobilized to appear in this production.
In 2016, the Berlin State Ballet gave Nacho Duato a chance to do a clean, modern, and romantic A+ Sleeping Beauty that ends with a dreamy wedding. This is the one to show any audience with young people (especially girls) who don’t yet have the attention span demanded by the Bolshi version.
In 2018, the Royal Opera House thoroughly overhauled their old tourist trap Sleeping Beauty and gave us a sparkling new A+ version with Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov that focuses on story-telling.
Finally, in 2020 La Scala published the longest and most elaborate Sleeping Beauty yet. It’s based on the Rudolf Nureyev choreography, which is superb. But we marked this down to just an A because of a mild case of DVDitis. If you have a special interest in Nureyev, this is the title for you.
So if you check out our stories on each version—all loaded with screenshots—you can’t go wrong. And for a camp, spooky Sleeping Beauty, try the Matthew Bourne concoction.