The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty holds a special place in The Royal Ballet’s repertory. It was the ballet with which the Company reopened the Royal Opera House in 1946 after World War II, its first production at its new home in Covent Garden. Margot Fonteyn danced the role of the beautiful Princess Aurora in the first performance, with Robert Helpmann as Prince Florimund. Sixty years later, in 2006, the original 1946 staging was revived by then Director of The Royal Ballet Monica Mason and Christopher Newton, returning Oliver Messel’s wonderful designs a...

Manon (The Royal Ballet)

Manon’s brother Lescaut is offering her to the highest bidder when she meets Des Grieux and falls in love. They elope to Paris, but when Monsieur G.M. offers Manon a life of luxury as his mistress she can’t resist.

The Sleeping Beauty

Lauren Cuthbertson, Sergei Polunin and Claire Calvert star in this true gem from the classical ballet repertory, set to Tchaikovsky's glorious music.

The Cellist / Dances at a Gathering (The Royal Ballet)

The Royal Ballet presents the world premiere of Cathy Marston's first work for the Company on the Main Stage alongside a revival of Jerome Robbins’s timeless classic of pure dance. The Cellist is a one-act ballet about British cellist Jacqueline du Pré, from her discovery of the cello through her celebrity as one of the most extraordinary players of the instrument to her frustration and struggle with multiple sclerosis. Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering is a fluid exercise in pure dance for five couples, set to piano music by Fryderyk...

The Cellist (Royal Opera House)

Cathy Marston's first work for the Royal Opera House Main Stage is a lyrical memoir of the momentous life of the cellist Jacqueline du Pré, from her discovery of the cello through her celebrity as one of the most extraordinary players of the instrument to her frustration and struggle with multiple sclerosis. Rich and poignant, joyous and tragic, The Cellist draws on the talents of The Royal Ballet's Principals, Character Artists, Soloists and Corps to tell the moving story of the cellist's life. Composer Philip Feeney incorporates some of t...

The Sleeping Beauty (Royal Ballet)

The wicked fairy Carabosse is furious she wasn’t invited to Princess Aurora’s christening. She gives the baby a spindle, saying that one day the Princess will prick her finger on it and die. The Lilac Fairy makes her own christening gift a softening of Carabosse’s curse: Aurora will not die, but will fall into a deep sleep, which only a prince’s kiss will break. The masterful 19th-century choreography of Marius Petipa is combined with sections created for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon. Recorded...