CINDERELLA
Herbert Thomas Dicksee: Cinderella, 1906
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITES
Prokofiev compiled three orchestral suites: Opp. 107, 108 and 109 from the ballet, and also provided the following
guide to the ballet music:
"My music has three basic themes: first theme,
Cinderella, the abused and ill-treated; second
theme, Cinderella, the chaste, pure and pensive;
the third and main theme, Cinderella, in love,
radiant with happiness. I also took a great deal
of trouble to establish every character through
the music ... in such a way that the audience
felt caught up in their joys and sorrows."
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 1, OP. 107
Jac van Steen, Conductor
National Orchestra of Wales
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 1, OP. 107
1. Introduction
2. Pas de Châle
3. Quarrel
4. Fairy Godmother and the Winter Fairy
5. Mazurka
6. Cinderella Goes to the Ball
7. Cinderella's Waltz
8. Midnight
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 1, OP. 107
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
USSR Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
1. Cinderella's Dreams
2. Dancing Lesson and Gavotte
3. Spring Fairy and Summer Fairy
4. Bourree
5. Cinderella at the Palace
6. Galop
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
I. Cinderella's Dreams
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108 II. Dancing Lesson and Gavotte
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108 III. Spring-Fairy and Summer-Fairy
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
IV. Bourree
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
V. Cinderella at the Palace
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108 V. Cinderella at the Palace VI. Grand Waltz Theodore Kuchar, Conductor Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj8VWAeGFQ0
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
VII. Gallop
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
1. Pavane
2. Cinderella and the Prince
3. Three Oranges
4. Dance of Temptation
5. Oriental Dance
6. The Prince Finds Cinderella
7. Slow Waltz
8. Amoroso
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109 I. Pavane
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109 II. Cinderella and the Prince
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109 III. Three Oranges
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
IV. Dance of Temptation
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
V. Oriental Dance
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
VI. The Prince Finds Cinderella
(Unable to locate a video)
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
VII. Slow Waltz
Thierry Fischer, Conductor
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
VIII. Amoroso (Finale)
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
VIDEO
Edmund Dulac
ARTICLE FROM:
PITTSBURG SYMPHONY
Sergei Prokofiev
Born April 23, 1891 in Sontzovka, Russia;
Died March 5, 1953 in Moscow.
SUITE FROM CINDERELLA
(1941-1944)
PREMIERE OF WORK:
Immediately after the belated triumph
in Ru ssia of his Romeo and Juliet
Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva:
Suspension Bridge, St. Petersburg (Leningrad)
(In 1914 the name of the city was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, back to Saint Petersburg.)
1940, Prokofiev was commissioned
by that company to write another full-
length ballet; Cinderella
Walter Crane: Cinderella
was suggested as the topic. Prokofiev
jumped at the idea, and he began the
piece early the following year. He
worked quickly, and had largely finished
the first two acts in short score by
early summer. Then, however, bitter
reality burst into his fantasy world.
he recalled in later years,
" on a warm, sunny morning, I was
the watchman's wife appeared and
asked me if it was true that the
Germans were attacking us and
bombing our towns. The news
[the director of Alexander Nevsky,
with whom Prokofiev had
developed a close association
after writing the score
for that monumental film],
and discovered that it was perfectly true.
On 22nd June, 1941, the German
Fascists attacked Soviet Russia. "
Under the circumstance, Cinderella
seemed frivolous and unpatriotic,
and Prokofiev put the score away in
favor of work on some military
marches and an opera based on
Repin: Leo Tolstoy
epic that uses an earlier European
invasion of Russia as its backdrop.
Prokofiev and other artists were
evacuated to the relative safety of
and then to Tiflis ,
(now called Tbilisi)
for the next two years, where, in
addition to War and Peace, he
composed his well-known Seventh
Piano Sonata, the Sonata for Flute
and Piano and the music for
The difficulty of the war years,
however, had not expunged
Cinderella from the Kirov's plans,
and in 1943 Prokofiev was
invited to join the company at its
Despite the cramped conditions and personnel limitations in Perm, the Kirov was still staging production
(Khachaturian's Gayne Ballet
had been premiered there the
preceding December), and its
administrators told Prokofiev that
they would like to mount his ballet
before the end of the year. He
worked throughout the summer in
close collaboration with the librettist
Nikolai Volkov and the choreographer
Konstantin Sergeyev
(who had danced Romeo in the
Kirov's 1940 production of Prokofiev's
masterwork), but the ballet proved to be too
elaborate for the facilities available at
Perm, and it was postponed.
The orchestration was completed
during the summer of 1944 at a retreat
house in Ivanovo , near Moscow,
where Prokofiev,
Dmitry Shostakovich
Reinhold Gliere
and other important composers
had been moved as the conditions
Cinderella was premiered with
great success on November 21,
1945, not by the Kirov in Leningrad,
Kirov in Leningrad
however, but by the Bolshoi in Moscow,
Bolshoi in Moscow
Galina Ulanova
the ballerina for whom
the title role was created,
Galina Ulanova as Cinderella
had recently transferred from
one company to the other.
Jennie Harbour: Cinderella
"The main thing I wanted to
convey in the music of Cinderella,"
wrote Prokofiev,
"was the poetic love of Cinderella
and the Prince — the inception
and flowering of the emotion,
the obstacles in its way, the
realization of a dream.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24778/24778-h/24778-h.htm#CINDERELLA
A major role in my work on
Cinderella was played by the fairy-
tale nature of the subject, which
faced me as the composer with a
number of interesting problems
— the mysteriousness of the good
grandmother fairy,
the fantasy of the twelve dwarfs
leaping at midnight from the clock
and beating out a tap-dance reminding
Cinderella to return home, the swift
alternation of the countries of the
world visited by the Prince in search
of Cinderella, the vivid and poetic
breath of nature in the figures of the
four fairies of the seasons of the
year and their attendants
CINDERELLA
The Seasons Fairies
Koen Kessels, Conductor
Birmingham Royal Ballet
Birmingham Royal Ballet Sinfonia, 2010
VIDEO
…. Besides the dramatic structure, it
was very important to me that the ballet
Cinderella should be most danceable,
that the dances should flow from the
design of the plot, be varied, and that
the artists in the ballet should have
sufficient measure of opportunity to
dance and display their art.
I wrote Cinderella in the
traditions of the old classical ballet;
it contains a pas-de-deux,
Leonid Afremov: Pas de Deux II
an adagio, a gavotte, several waltzes,
a pavane, a passepied, a bourrée,
a mazurka, a galop. Every personage
has his variation. Although the fairy
tale of Cinderella is found among
many peoples, I wanted to take it up
as a genuine Russian fairy story. "
More than just a children's story
or a bit of theatrical escapism,
Cinderella touches on deeper
meanings and more universal themes.
Florence Harrison: Cinderella at the Hazel Tree
The work's librettist,
Nikolai Volkov, said that
" new images of the Prince and the
drudge [Cinderella] rose before my
eyes. The Prince acquired the
features of a passionate and
impetuous youth who longed to
escape from the confining influence
of the stagnant court life…. In our
imagination, Cinderella was
shrouded in the mists of dreams,
a girl who lived on the foretaste of
love. The result of this interpretation
of the chief characters was that the
ballet acquired the features
The fairy tale, while preserving its
mood of fantasy, was filled with a
psychological and lyrical content. "
In his biography of Prokofiev,
Israel V. Nestyev wrote,
" The underlying idea of the ballet
is Cinderella’s modesty, industry
and spiritual purity over the greed,
heartlessness and crass arrogance
of her stepmother and stepsisters.
Following the original story, the
cruel characters are derided and
humbled, and the good Cinderella
is chosen by the Prince.
Pure love is the central theme of both the
libretto and the music of the ballet."
Kinuko Craft: Cinderella
BALLET MUSIC
COMPLETE
CINDERELLA BALLET OP. 87
ACT I
Andrè Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ize83QoDSb0
No 1 Introduction
No 2 Shawl Dance
No 3 Cinderella
No 4 The Father
No 5 The Fairy Godmother
No 6 The Sisters' New Clothes
No 7 The Dancing Lesson
No 8 Departure of the Stepmother and the Sisters for the Ball
No 9 Cinderella Dreams of the Ball
No 10 Gavotte
No 11 Second Appearance of the Fairy Godmother
No 12 Spring Fairy
No 13 Summer Fairy
No 14 Grasshoppers and Dragonflies
No 15 Autumn Fairy
No 16 Winter Fairy
No 17 The Interrupted Departure
No 18 The Clock
No 19 Cinderella's Departure for the Ball
Arthur Rackham: Cinderella Ironing the Sisters' Linen, 1919
CINDERELLA BALLET OP. 87 ACT II Andrè Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-fabUB8HzY
No 20 Dance of the Courtiers
No 21 Passepied
No 22 Bourrée
No 23 Skinny's Variation
No 24 Dumpy's Variation
No 25 Dance of the Courtiers (Reprise)
No 26 Mazurka and Entrance of the Prince
No 27 Dance of the Prince's Four Companions
No 28 Mazurka
No 29 Cinderella's Arrival at the Ball
No 30 Grand Waltz
No 31 Promenade
No 32 Cinderella's Dance
No 33 Dance of the Prince
No 34 Refreshments for the Guests
No 35 Duet of the Sisters with the Oranges
(musical quote from the 1919 opera L'amour des trois oranges)
No 36 Duet of the Prince and Cinderella
No 37 Waltz-Coda
No 38 Midnight
CINDERELLA BALLET OP. 87 ACT III Andrè Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2z39Y3F3Qg
ACT III, SCENE I
The search for Cinderella
No 39 The Prince and the Cobblers
No 40 First Galop of the Prince
No 41 Temptation
No 42 Second Galop of the Prince
No 43 Orientalia
No 44 Third Galop of the Prince
ACT III, SCENE II
The Prince with Cinderella
No 45 Cinderella's Awakening No 46 The Morning After the Ball No 47 The Prince's Visit No 48 The Prince Recognizes Cinderella No 49 Slow Waltz No 50 Amoroso
Edward Burne-Jones: Cinderella
LINKS
http://d.lib.rochester.edu/cinderella/text/ballet
Aubrey Beardsley: The Slippers of Cinderella, 1894
"WALTZ" AND "MIDNIGHT"
LESSON PLAN
Ann Arbor Symphony
WALTZ-CODA-MIDNIGHT
VIDEO
George Cruikshank: Cinderella by the Fireside with her Fairy Godmother
CINDERELLA BALLET
Part 1
Cinderella: Diana Vishneva, Dancer
The Prince: Vladimir Shklyarov, Dancer
Valery Gergiev, Conductor
Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra
VIDEO
CINDERELLA BALLET
Cinderella: Diana Vishneva, Dancer
The Prince: Vladimir Shklyarov, Dancer
Valery Gergiev, Conductor
Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra
VIDEO