The Cinderella story long predates Disney — Charles Perrault wrote it in 1697, the Brothers Grimm in 1812, and Rossini turned it into an opera (La Cenerentola) in 1817. Prokofiev was commissioned by the Bolshoi to compose the ballet, and worked on it between 1940 and 1944, through the war years, in something close to exile from the international career he’d built before returning to the Soviet Union.
The score premiered at the Bolshoi in 1945. It’s one of the great ballet scores — genuinely romantic in the waltz themes, genuinely funny in the stepsisters (Prokofiev, like Saint-Saëns and Shostakovich, had a taste for musical caricature), and genuinely terrifying in the midnight scene, where the clock strikes twelve and the harmony collapses under Cinderella’s feet.
What makes it unusual for a fairy-tale ballet is the acidity underneath. The tenderness is real, but Prokofiev never lets you forget who he is. Frederick Ashton’s Royal Ballet production, first staged in 1948, is the canonical Western version and the one worth starting with.