OTTORINO RESPIGHI The Sleeping Beauty Rehearsal Room Victorian Opera presents The Sleeping Beauty La bella dormente nel bosco FAIRY TALE OPERA IN THREE ACTS Composer Ottorino Respighi Librettist Gian Bistolfi Based on La belle au bois dormant by Charles Perrault Creative Team Conductor Phoebe Briggs Original Choreographer Director Nancy Black Michelle Heaven Set Designer Morwenna Schenck Revival Choreographer Elizabeth Hill-Cooper Original Set Design Bluebottle Original Puppet Design and Construction Costume Designer Mel Serjeant Joe Blanck Lighting Designer Philip Lethlean Cast The Nightingale Rebecca Rashleigh The Queen / The Cat Dimity Shepherd The Cuckoo Shakira Dugan The Old Lady / The Duchess Liane Keegan The Frog / The Spindle Kirilie Blythman The Princess Georgia Wilkinson The Ambassador Michael Lampard The Woodcutter Stephen Marsh The Blue Fairy Kathryn Radcliffe The Prince Carlos E. Bárcenas The Jester / Mister Dollar Cheque A Villager Douglas Kelly Timothy Reynolds Puppeteers Christian Bagin, The Green Fairy Juel Riggall Vincent Crowley, Nadine Dimitrievitch, The King Raphael Wong Kate Fryer, Kaira Hachefa, Stéphane Hisler, Luke Taylor Orchestra Victoria Concertmaster Jenny Khafagi 23, 24, 25, 26 February 2021 Palais Theatre Original premiere 13 April 1922, Teatro Odescalchi, Rome Duration 80 minutes, no interval Sung in Italian with English surtitles Production Production Team Stage Manager Whitney McNamara Deputy Stage Manager Andrea Corish Performance Assistant Stage Manager / Mechanist Tiernan Maclaren Head Mechanist Adam Brunskill Costume Supervisor Mel Serjeant Assistant to Costume Supervisor / Maintenance Amelia Peace Music Staff Principal Repetiteur Tom Griffiths Repetiteur Phillipa Safey Acknowledgements Victorian Opera thanks Arts Centre Melbourne, Norwest, System Sound and BAAC Light. Rehearsal Room P. 4 Victorian Opera 2021 The Sleeping Beauty Orchestra Concertmaster Oboe Jenny Khafagi + Section Principal Rachel Bullen + Violin Section Principal Clarinet Ioana Tache + Section Principal Principal 2nd Violin Lloyd Van’t Hoff + Alyssa Conrau* Bassoon Associate Principal Section Principal Karla Hanna + Lyndon Watts + Tutti Edwina Kayser + Horn Lynette Rayner + Section Principal Christine Wang + Roman Ponomariov + Viola Trumpet Section Principal Section Principal Jason Bunn* Christopher Grace + Associate Principal Isabel Morse + Trombone Section Principal Cello Robert Collins + Section Principal Rosanne Hunt + Percussion Associate Principal Section Principal Zoe Wallace + Scott Weatherson + Double Bass Piano / Keyboard Tom Griffiths ≠ Section Principal Kylie Davies + * Acting § On Leave Flute + Guest Musician ++ Guest Principal Section Principal +++ Guest Associate Principal Rebecca Johnson + ≠ Courtesy of Victorian Opera For a full list of Orchestra Victoria’s musicians, please click here Victorian Opera 2021 The Sleeping Beauty P. 5 Director’s Note Since our earliest beginnings, hope – that all is not lost, but first they humankind has told stories through must go into lockdown. Years later, a image and language to clarify our new energy, injected by a kiss, releases ever-fracturing world. We hunger for them, and they find themselves in a answers. What has happened? Why? whole new world, to which they begin Who was involved? What should we to adapt. Their joy returns. do? And the future? Religions, too, can One hundred years later, the parallels be viewed as responses to our need to with 2021 are remarkable. understand. Respighi wrote this for the puppet Fairy tales, from every culture, theatre Teatro dei Piccoli in Naples. contribute enormously to this The puppets were marionnettes, and literature, but differ from fables and the singers were in the orchestra pit. religious texts in that they don’t express I decided to keep the singers onstage a moral or explore real events. Instead, as a suffering community who use they present scenarios involving magic, puppets to tell themselves a story that inexplicable events, love, success and unfolds in a parallel universe. It begins failure, and the struggle between good wistfully, then gathers energy from the and evil. It’s a mistake to think of them oppositions he sets up between dark as only children’s stories. Ottorino and light, tenderness and rage, grief Respighi did not. and humour. It’s a remarkable piece, When he composed La bella dormente and I am privileged to work with a nel bosco in 1921, Italy was slowly remarkable team. It’s our first real step recovering from the devastation out of lockdown. We hope you share wrought by World War I and the Spanish our joy! Flu. He and librettist Gian Bistolfi took this ancient tale – whose best-known NANCY BLACK form is by the Brothers Grimm – and Director made an opera about catastrophe, loss, grief, hope, resilience and love. It was a call to a better future. Its simplest outline: as a community rejoices, it is told of an impending catastrophe. They try everything to prevent it, and fail. The grief is terrible. They are urged to P. 6 Victorian Opera 2021 The Sleeping Beauty Conductor’s Note Respighi described his score of La bella body as they respond to the music, the dormente nel bosco as an ‘innocent singers’ voices and the meaning of the mockery of contemporary melodrama’. text has been fascinating to witness. From the opening lush and sultry The sheer joy, humour and pathos that landscape of the Nightingale and these extraordinary puppets bring to the Cuckoo the beautiful score leaps joyfully production heighten each moment of and humorously to life with a rich variety the music and add to the depth of the of orchestral colours and musical styles. emotional journey of the characters. Respighi clearly defines his characters How wonderful to be able to revisit musically, shifting effortlessly from the this joyful work after the collective sublime to the silly for the Frog scene experience that was 2020. (complete with raganella or cog whistle to represent the frogs) and then into the lyrical landscape of the fairytale PHOEBE BRIGGS kingdom. Conductor The neoclassical score is full of inspiration from other composers, such as Wagner (the King’s march), Schubert (Gretchen am Spinnrade’s mesmeric semiquaver passage for the Old Lady’s spinning wheel), Debussy (Mister Dollar Cheque’s Cake Walk) and Puccini (Mimì’s death chords are used as the Princess falls asleep after pricking her finger on the spindle). These musical nods to other composers, rather than being direct quotes, are used to extend dramatic thought and to perhaps trigger recall of specific moments from other works. The process from the first days of improvisation and workshopping of ideas by the puppeteers to the fine tuning of each movement of a puppet’s face or Victorian Opera 2021 The Sleeping Beauty P. 7 Synopsis Act 1 The Blue Fairy casts a spell of sleep over the Castle, predicting that the The year is 1620. The Nightingale’s song Princess will one day be woken by competes with the Cuckoo’s, disturbed the kiss of April. A group of humming by a group of dancing Frogs. The Royal Spiders wrap the castle in their silvery Ambassador and a Herald arrive to web. announce the birth of the Princess, inviting the Fairies to be godmothers Act 3 of the child. The Court Jester tries It is the 21st Century. In the woods to entertain the baby Princess. The near the castle, a Woodcutter sings. King and Queen arrive, accompanied Prince April enters accompanied by a by the Fairies and Royal guests. The Duchess and a rich American, Mister ceremony is interrupted by the arrival Dollar Cheque. The Prince is fascinated of the Green Fairy. In a fit of rage at by the tale of the Sleeping Beauty as being excluded from the festivities, she told by the Woodcutter. Jealous, the declares that at age 20 the Princess Duchess is consoled by Mister Dollar will prick her finger on a spindle and fall Cheque who offers to buy the Sleeping asleep forever. After the Green Fairy Beauty. The Prince leaves his horse and leaves, the King orders all spindles be journeys to the castle. In the hall where destroyed. the Princess lies, the Prince greets the Act 2 motionless courtiers. A large spider attempts to trap him in its web, but the Twenty years later, an old woman Prince defeats it. He sees the Sleeping spins with the last remaining spindle. Beauty and his kiss awakens her. They When she leaves the room the Princess sing a love duet. The Blue Fairy appears comes in and greets a suspicious Cat and blesses the happy couple. who introduces her to the spindle. The old woman returns and when urged by the Princess, teaches her how to spin. The Green Fairy’s prophecy comes true when the spindle pricks the Princess’ finger and she falls asleep. The Doctors tell the King that they don’t know the cause of the Princess’ illness. Shortly after, a procession of mourners enters. P. 8 Victorian Opera 2021 The Sleeping Beauty Rehearsal Room Nadine Dimitrievitch Creative Team BMus (University of Melbourne). Opera Australia music staff 2002 – 2012, Head of Music at Victorian Opera since October 2012. For Victorian Opera, Phoebe has conducted Sunday in the Park with George, Play of Herod, Sweeney Todd, Cendrillon, Four Saints in Three Acts (Green Room nomination), The Sleeping Beauty (Green Room nomination), Lorelei, Black Rider (Helpmann nomination, VO/Malthouse), A Little Night Music. Other companies: Opera in the Paddock (Opera Northwest), assistant/cover conductor Don Pasquale (IFAC/OA, Tokyo), The Magic Flute, Merry Widow, Fledermaus, The Pearlfishers, Così fan tutte, A Little Night Music, The Mikado (OA), Guys and Dolls Phoebe Briggs (Ambassador Group). Conductor Nancy Black, the Artistic Director of Black Hole Theatre, has created and directed award winning shows, produced festivals, outdoor performances, operas, and ten Puppet Slams. Choosing to work across disciplines, she has collaborated with Australian and international artists, and toured widely. Her work includes: Caravan, Coop, Hutch, Into the Black Hole, 10 Puppet Slams around Victoria and NSW, Les Méduses, Blind, The Book of Revelations, Spin A Yarn, The Last Lighthouse Keeper.