This "Sleeping Beauty" is beautiful. The costumes are lavish and beautiful and the sets wistful, romantic, and straight out of a fairy tale.
The dancing, all around, is amazing, and Alina Cojocaru is wonderful as Aurora. Her dancing is light, beautiful and graceful. She makes a youthful, sweet, smiling, tender princess - a princess on the inside as well as on the outside. Even on the hard moments like the Rose Adagio, she remains with us - gentle, warm, and accessible. Her Aurora is really moving and heart-warming. During the Rose Adagio, she makes her balances perfectly. I understand that it's an awful, insane moment and it's so hard to get those balances perfect, but Alina handles them so beautifully, and her balances are quite steady. She is at rest performing them, too; there seems to be nothing strained in the moment for her. Federico Bonelli is also a fantastic prince, and his dancing is beautiful. Marianela Nuñez is lovely as the Lilac Fairy, and Genesia Rosato makes an evil, cackling Carabosse. She obviously really relished playing the role. The other fairies were also all amazing in their Act One variations, and the dances of Act Three were also beautiful. Sarah Lamb was especially great in the Bluebird variation.
The only other thing I'll mention is that Opus Arte made a mistake in the programme leaflet inside the DVD. The man partnering Sarah Lamb as the Bluebird in Act Three is not Jose Martin, as the leaflet states. It is Yohei Sasaki. The people writing that programme got the name wrong on their cast list, though I don't know why. Yohei Sasaki is still credited at the end of the DVD itself, when the credits roll up over the screen.
Anyway, this is a wonderful performance. I recommend it. :)