Benois discovers Tchaikovsky

I attended neither the dress rehearsal nor the opening night and I saw The Sleeping Beauty for the first time only at its second or third performance. I remember that it was a matinee during the Christmas holidays which gave Dima Filosofov and me the opportunity of seeing it. I remember too that it was Dima who dragged me there as he had heard at home that the ballet was not so bad after all. I must admit that my first impression was, if not a revelation, nevertheless that of having attended a grandiose banquet. What I had seen and heard seemed to be 'worthy of attention'. With some of the music I had a kind of foretaste that it might be very much to my liking. I simply did not dare believe what was growing in the very depths of my heart. I very much wanted to see The Sleeping Beauty again as soon as possible and particularly to listen again to the music.

After this I did not miss a single performance and even managed to see it four times in the last week before Lent, when there were matinees as well as evening performances.

. . . .

This admiration for The Sleeping Beauty directed my interest, which had somewhat cooled, back to the ballet. It infected my friends, and we gradually became real ballet fans. So was created the main prerequisite for our joint activities several years later in a sphere which brought us world-wide success. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, had it not been for my enthusiasm for The Sleeping Beauty (and before that for Coppelia, Giselle and The Pharaoh's Daughter with Zucchi), and had I not infected my friends with it, there would have been no Ballets Russes and none of the balletomania which their success evoked.

Memoirs [volume 2] by Alexandre Benois. 1964. Pages 59-61.