Alexander Nikolaevich Benois

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'I simply could not believe in my own joy; (...) I was already completely in the power of something entirely new, but for which, nevertheless, my soul had been waiting, for a long, long while.'

(Benois' impressions on La Belle au Bois Dormant in 1890, in Remimiscences of the Russian Ballet, Alexandre Benois, Putnam, London, 1941, p.124)

Alexander Benois was among the first viewers of the original Sleeping Beauty, having attended its third ever performance at the Mariinsky Theatre in January 1890. Enraptured by Piotr Tchaikovsky's score, which 'opened his ears' to Russian music, and the theatrical unity of the entire production, Alexander attended its every remaining showing that season. His infatuation infected his friends, mostly future members of the Mir Iskusstva or World of Art group, with balletomania, and he would later write that some part of this spark contributed to the founding of the Ballets Russes. Indeed, in 1921 Sergei Diaghilev first turned to Benois for the design of the company's staging of Sleeping Beauty, only to offer it to Leon Bakst when Alexander was unable to leave the Soviet Union.

As a designer, Benois drew on the concept of Sleeping Beauty before he actually designed a production himself. Mariinsky director Ivan Vsevolozhsky had used the inventive scenographic idea of setting the first part of the ballet in the French Renaissance, and placing Aurore's awakening in the reign of Louis XIV, when the original Charles Perrault fairytale was published. Alexander focused on this era in his first major ballet, Pavillon d'Armide, for which he was the librettist, designer and stage director. Pavillon d'Armide is suffused with visual themes of Versailles and the court of the Sun King, as well as other allusions to Sleeping Beauty. Curiously, after the Bakst Sleeping Beauty production was seized by creditors, Diaghilev used worn-out sets and costumes from the 1909 Pavillon d' Armide for the abridged segment of the ballet that he presented under the name The Marriage of Aurore.

Benois was eventually given the chance to design his beloved ballet for Milan's La Scala when he was well into his eighties. These scrolling panoramas give the impression of travel as the LIla Fairy takes Prince Florimund on a boat to the enchanted palace where Princess Aurora lies sleeping. The elaborate Baroque palace in the background and the orderly foliage of a French garden in front bathed in the romantic light of a setting sun, are very reminiscent of Pavillon d'Armide. For the production, first planned for 1952 but actually staged in 1953, Benois essentially recreated the visual look of the 1890 version. Although he went on to live and work for seven more years, at the time Alexander saw the project as an important conclusion to his career.