Lot 187
187
The Sleeping Beauty
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VA… Read more The Dame Margot Fonteyn Collection Continued The Sleeping Beauty A ballet in three acts and four scenes, based on Perrault's fairy tale. (H.Koegler op. cit p.383) King Florestan and his Queen invited all the Fairies to be present as Godmothers at the christening of their infant daughter Princess Aurora. In an oversight, they forgot to invite the Fairy Carabosse, who was vastly insulted. Nevertheless she arrives and sets a curse on Aurora, that one day Aurora will prick her finger on a spindle and die. Carabosse's curse is however confounded by the Lilac Fairy who promises Aurora that in the event of her pricking her finger in this manner, rather than dying, she will fall into a deep sleep, from which she can only be awakened after a hundred years by a Prince's kiss. Sixteen years later, during the celebrations for Aurora's birthday, Carabosse engineer's events so that Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle and collapses. The Lilac Fairy appears to fulfill her promise and casts a spell of sleep over the whole scene and commands a forest to grow up to utterly conceal the palace. A hundred years later, the Lilac Fairy appears to a young Prince on a hunting expedition in the forest, and shows him a vision of the Princess Aurora. When the vision disappears, the Prince implores the Lilac Fairy to lead him to the palace where the Beauty sleeps. He enters the palace, finds Aurora and awakens her with a kiss, the happy couple are then blessed in their marriage by the Lilac Fairy. (Summary of the programme synopsis for The Sadler's Wells Ballet's production at The Royal Opera House)
The Sleeping Beauty

Details
The Sleeping Beauty
Production: Première - February 20th, 1946, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; The Sadler's Wells Ballet; The Royal Ballet Touring Company, 1964
Music: Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky
Choreography: After Marius Petipa with additions by Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois; Production by Nicholai Sergeyev
Design: Oliver Messel
Character: Rose Adagio, Act I

A tutu, the boned bodice of pink silk woven with gold lamé, lavishly embroidered with silver braid, sequins, lace and white net in a scrolling pattern of stylised foliage, the long net sleeves similarly decorated with silver braid and sequins and with scarlet ribbon flowerheads attached to the shoulder straps, the matching skirt embellished with silver lamé ribbon, braid and sequins in a stylised foliage pattern and overlaid with white chiffon, edged with a ruff of simulated lace woven with gilt thread - crin, and stiffended with layers of fuchsia pink and flame coloured stiffened tulle with scalloped edges, with Royal Opera House, Covent Garden printed label inscribed in black ink with details - Production: Sleeping Beauty, Act: I, Character: Rose Adogio [sic], Name: Fonteyn; accompanied by a corresponding photograph by James Kavallines of Fonteyn on stage in New York, circa 1964 -- 14x11in. (35.5x28cm.) and another by Houston Rogers, 1961 -- 10x8in. (25.4x20.3cm.) (3)
Literature
FONTEYN, Margot Autobiography, London: W.H.Allen, 1975, pp.75, 118-121
MONEY, Keith The Art of Margot Fonteyn, London: Michael Joseph, 1965
Special notice
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Lot Essay

It is difficult to date this costume, as this production ran from the 1940s until the 1960s. We do believe however, that it dates from the 1960s, it is possible that Fonteyn could have worn it in 1964 when she danced in The Royal Ballet Touring Company's production for the first time.

The new production of The Sleeping Beauty was chosen as the ballet to open Sadler's Wells first season at Covent Garden and to re-open the Opera House itself after the war. Fonteyn was particularly complimentary about Oliver Messel's design ...The muted settings were calculated to give prominence to the dancers, and the costumes had all the splendour one could wish for, without exaggerations of colour or proportion. Never were dancers shown to better advantage...
Fonteyn had danced in The Sleeping Beauty since 1938 and despite her familiarity with the role, the extreme demands it made on her meant that she approached the part with the same degree of trepidation as she did Swan Lake, ie. 'terror'. It was this particular Ashton/Messel production of The Sleeping Beauty which transported the fledgling Sadler's Wells company and Margot Fonteyn, the company's official Prima Ballerina, to international fame following the first performance at the Metropolitan Opera, in New York in 1949, three years after the première in London.

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