Set design by Oliver Messel for the back-cloth in the Prologue of Marius Petipa's ballet The Sleeping Beauty, Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet, 1946 or later revision.

A set design for the back-cloth, Prologue, in the ballet The Sleeping Beauty. Depicting King Floristan's palace on the left, with Baroque columns and statuary. The palace is seen from a diagonal perspective. On the right, a view of the garden, with clumps of trees and a bubbling fountain. View to hills and sky in the distance.

Acquired with the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund and the Friends of the V&A

The Sleeping Beauty (1890), a ballet composed by Tchaikovsky with libretto by Marius Petipa and Ivan Vsevolojsky after the fairy tale by Charles Perrault (1697). Choreography by Marius Petipa. Oliver Messel’s production first performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet at the Royal Opera House, London on 20 February 1946. It was produced by Nicholai Sergeyev and has additional choreography by Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois. It featured Margot Fonteyn as Princess Aurora and Robert Helpmann and David Paltenghi as Prince Florimund. This performance marked the re-opening of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a theatre after its war-time use as a dance hall.
It was also performed on 9 October, 1949 at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, the production with which the Royal Ballet conquered New York. It was revised on a number of occasions most notably in 1952 and 1960 when several of the costumes as well as choreography and the production were reworked and was mounted in 1959 for the Royal Ballet Touring Company. It remained in performance by the Royal Ballet companies for twenty five years. Sarah Woodcock said of this production “The Sleeping Beauty was to be Messel’s biggest and most enduring production … The production was performed nearly one thousand one hundred and fifty times, from London to Los Angeles, from Leeds to Leningrad, becoming the Company’s ‘signature ballet’.” (Pinkham, ed., 1983).
Lord Snowdon, Oliver Messel's nephew, inherited Messel's theatre designs and other designs and artefacts. The designs were briefly stored in a disused chapel in Kensington Palace before being housed at the V&A from 1981 on indefinite loan. The V&A Theatre Museum purchased the Oliver Messel collection from Lord Snowdon in 2005.

Historical significance: Messel's costume and set designs for the Sadler's Wells Ballet production of The Sleeping Beauty in 1946 became the definitive stage designs for the ballet, enduring many revivals to 1970.

The design might be for a later revised production.

Reason For Production: Commission

Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain’s leading theatre designer throughout the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, mastering every aspect of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well working in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic concepts were perfectly in tune with the times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, that style was becoming unfashionable, and Messel gradually abandoned theatre and built a new career designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.

The Sleeping Beauty, first performed by the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet in 1946, is Messel's most enduring production in Great Britain. He designed over one thousand costumes for the many revivals of this production between 1946 and 1970. The fanciful costumes and sets are inspired by the work of artists and stage designers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Messel created a tranquil palace garden with groups of trees and a bubbling fountain for Aurora's christening in the Prologue. The landscape is softly painted with feathery brush strokes in harmonious warm tones of turquoise, brown and yellow, contrasting with the hard lines and cold white tones of the architecture. The style is reminicent of French eighteenth century landscape painting, such as the work of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721).

S.23-2006