Antimusical

This does become monstrously antimusical in one scene: when Tchaikovsky’s music, softly depicting the sleeping palace (my favorite passage of this composer’s entire oeuvre, with its beautifully muffled oboe melody suggesting how beauty ripens in sleep like a chrysalis), is turned into an epic battle for the poor passive Prince, conducted between the wicked Carabosse, with her ghoulish minions, and the Lilac Fairy, with her elves.