The Wooden Prince (Hungarian: A fából faragott királyfi), Op. 13, Sz. 60, is a one-act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók in 1914–1916 (orchestrated 1916–1917) to a scenario by Béla Balázs. It was first performed at the Budapest Opera on 12 May 1917 under the conductor Egisto Tango.
The Wooden Prince has never achieved the fame of Bartók's other ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin (1926) but it was enough of a success at its premiere to prompt the Opera House to stage Bartók's opera, Bluebeard's Castle (which had not been performed since 1911) in the following year. Like Bluebeard, The Wooden Prince uses a huge orchestra (it even includes saxophones), though the critic Paul Griffiths believes it sounds like an earlier work in style (Griffiths p. 71). The music shows the influence of Debussy and Richard Strauss, as well as Wagner (the introduction echoes the prelude of Das Rheingold). Bartók used a scenario by the poet Béla Balázs, which had appeared in the influential literary journal Nyugat in 1912.
This work contains the largest orchestration which Bartók ever scored for:
Woodwinds: 4 flutes (third doubling on piccolo 2, fourth on piccolo 1), 4 oboes (third on English horn 2, fourth on English horn 1), 4 clarinets (third doubling on E-flat clarinet, fourth on bass clarinet), 4 bassoons (third and fourth doubling on contrabassoons), Alto saxophone in E♭, tenor saxophone in B♭ (doubling on baritone saxophone in E♭)
Brass: 4 horns, 6 trumpets (4 trumpets and 2 cornets, all in B♭), 3 trombones, tuba
Percussion (timpanist and 5 players): timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, field drum, triangle, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, castanets
2 harps, celesta for 4 hands
Strings: 16 first and 16 second violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, 8 double basses