In the apotheosis of Sergei Vikharev’s restoration of Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty, as pictured in my squib on Vikkarev in Ballet Review, I want to point out something I’d forgotten: amid the assembled suspended in the sky is not just good fairy Lilac and her retinue, but evil fairy Carabosse as well. You know, the one who caused all the problems.
S/he, too is a guest at Aurora’s wedding, having arrived, like Lilac via palanquin at the top of act 3, to jubilant fanfare by Tchaikovsky.
Forces for both good and bad are in balance, or perhaps the bad has been humbled, and may even have repented. Or perhaps s/he has simply been forgiven, in tune with the benevolent magnanimity of everything surrounding Lilac and her blessed kingdoms.