Year: 2005

Tchaikovsky counted Sleeping Beauty as one of his best works. The idea came from Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1835-1909), director of the Russian Imperial Theatres from 1881 onward. He had staged several of Tchaikovskyís operas, and he wanted Tchaikovsky to produce a ballet score with him.

The formidable Straussian Sir Georg Solti wrote that after the 1929 death of Straussís long-time librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ìStrauss lived for another twenty years, but he never again wrote a great work.î

Khachaturian was one of the few Soviet composers of the Stalin regime to overcome his public demotion in 1948. Even though he was removed from his job and his works disappeared from the theatres, Khachaturian moved to the world of film music and waited for the storm to blow over.