Scenes from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella

The plot of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella, taken from the fairytale by Charles Perrault, was interpreted in a very unusually fashion. In 1941 the composer said in an interview that “The plot is based on the fairytale of Cinderella – a story that exists in all nations and all peoples but which I wanted to take as a truly Russian story.” It is not easy to find traces of Russian fairytales, though it is easy to think of the numerous Hollywood “Cinderellas” who went on to find their princes. Only Prokofiev’s music colours this optimistic Hollywood tale in somewhat sad tones: because in real life a beautiful dream very rarely becomes a reality.

The Kirov Theatre commissioned Prokofiev to write Cinderella, and the premiere was due to take place in the 1942–43 season, but the War intervened. As a result the ballet was only completed in 1944 and on 21 November 1945 it was performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. On 8 April the next year Cinderella was shown to residents of Leningrad – with choreography by Konstantin Sergeyev and with the composer’s original score (in Moscow it had been considered too clear and it was “sanitised”).

The ballet is composed in traditional forms with an abundance of old ballroom dances, and so it was rather easy to create suites from the music. In this sense Cinderella is a record holder: in 1943 and 1944 the composer released two piano suites followed by three symphonic suites in 1946 which included almost half of the ballet’s music – twenty-two of the total fifty numbers. Anna Bulycheva