La belle au bois dormant (Lecocq)

La belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods) is an opéra comique in three acts with music by Charles Lecocq and words by Albert Vanloo and Georges Duval.

He had written very popular operas in the early 1880s, but of his later comic pieces only Ninette (1896) ran for more than the 100 performances regarded as the criterion of success in Parisian theatres of the time.

But a struggle begins between the beneficent fairy Aurore and the Taupier, a wicked old wizard, who has sworn that the Sleeping Beauty will scorn her Prince Charming.

In Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, Edmond Stoullig reported on the librettists' treatment of the story, and doubted that their changes to the traditional version were wise.

Of the music, he said merely that it was a great pity that Lecocq had failed to recapture the inspiration he had shown in La fille de Madame Angot and other earlier works.