In the following years they cooperated on a series of opera productions, usually on Andersen’s initiative, but Bournonville also realized the profitable in Andersen’s aid. Encouraged by Bournonville, the poet began to sketch out a so-called “Opera-Ballet” entitled The Valkyrie [Valkyrien] in 1849. Even if the project was never realized in the version Andersen wanted, Bournonville took Andersen’s draft seriously and elaborated on his original idea when it was realized in 1861 as a ballet project and with himself as the only official author of the plot.

Their last cooperation was in 1859 with the revival of The Intermezzo in Holberg’s The Healing Spring [Kilderejsen]. Bournonville wrote a detailed mise en scène and asked Andersen to write the part songs while Hartmann composed the music.

The Bournonville work that is most directly inspired by Andersen’s fairy tale world is the ballet A Fairy Tale in Pictures [Et Eventyr i Billeder] from 1871. It was founded on the fairy tale The Steadfast Tin Soldier and was put together by a number of pantomime sequences alternating with eight tableaux vivants showing situations from Andersen’s most popular fairy tales and stories. Despite of a remarkable opposition from the newspaper critics the ballet obtained great popular success and was followed only two years later by a short divertissement version. Whether Andersen thought the atmosphere of his fairy tale was present in Bournonville’s ballet or not, still remains uncertain as he never wrote anything about it.