John Cranko resident choreographer for Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet's 1950–51 season. For the company's Festival of Britain season in 1951 Cranko choreographed the comic ballet "Pineapple Poll", to the music of Arthur Sullivan (newly out of copyright) arranged by the conductor Charles Mackerras. Another collaboration with Mackerras followed in 1954 with "The Lady and the Fool", to music by Verdi. In January 1954 Sadler's Wells Ballet announced that Cranko was collaborating with Benjamin Britten to create a ballet. Cranko devised a draft scenario for a work he originally called "The Green Serpent", fusing elements drawn from "King Lear", "Beauty and the Beast"
Ballet (music) piece to be created by a symphonic composer. Following the initiative of Tchaikovsky, ballet composers were no longer writing simple, easily danceable pieces. The focus of a ballet was no longer solely the dance; the compositions behind the dances began to take an equal prevalence. In the late 19th century, Marius Petipa, French ballet choreographer and dancer, worked with composers such as Cesare Pugni to create ballet masterpieces that boasted both complex dance and complex music. Petipa worked with Tchaikovsky as well, whether through collaboration with Tchaikovsky on his work "The Sleeping Beauty" and "The Nutcracker", or indirectly through revision