This extremely beautiful book was bought at Opéra Garnier in March 2024. By then I had already started my adult ballet journey I mentioned in an earlier post, and had seen this classic story performed live.
This illustrated book is an absolute gem - adapted by Belgian poet Pierre Coran, it is not only beautifully illustrated by Olivier Desvaux but it comes with a 55 min long CD - and several links to the online playlists, including on Spotify - where one can listen to the classic Tchaikovsky composition with narration by Natalie Dessay that follows Pierre Coran’s text.
The text here is very short but I feel like it’s a very clear and good summary of the story. I also liked Natalie’s voice and I liked being able to follow the story with the music.
I cannot make myself take photos that will do this book any justice, so I took the following from Olivier Desvaux’s blog. Be sure to open them to see them fully!
In the meantime, “Natalie Dessay raconte” is a collection with other books that follow this style, and a few of them seem to be classic ballet related.
A few takeaways from this book:
- the illustrations are beautiful and adequate, the story is very clear and the narration playing along with the composition is great
- this book + playlist media reminded me of the illustrated books I’d read as a child that had a tape to go along with the book; I wish there was more of that these days
- as far as I can tell, no book by Pierre Coran has been published in Portugal in more than 20 years
- would children these days truly enjoy this book? Let me know your thoughts in the comments as I might be underestimating children. This is for kids 6+
If you’re in Portugal, you can (surprisingly to me, not gonna lie here) get a physical edition via wook, in French, as it was not translated into Portuguese or English. But the text is rather simple so if your French is limited but you’re interested, it’s worth a try?