One of the greatest ballet productions of all time. (With perhaps the best entrance of the fairies ever devised.) The year was 1946. The war was over and civilization’s reawakening found a perfect metaphor in this vision of The Sleeping Beauty. Frederick Ashton worked his magic on the staging, Margot Fonteyn blossomed as Aurora, and Oliver Messel’s costumes and scenery are immortal. While Messel’s original lace cuffs, due to postwar poverty, were made of paper doilies, these lace cuffs are real. —Laura Jacobs