The Sleeping Beauty
The Royal Opera’s The Sleeping Beauty will be broadcast live in cinemas on Thursday 16 January with an encore screening on Sunday 19 January.
The wicked fairy Carabosse is furious she wasn’t invited to Princess Aurora’s christening. She gives the baby a spindle, saying that one day the Princess will prick her finger on it and die. The Lilac Fairy makes her own christening gift a softening of Carabosse’s curse: Aurora will not die but will fall into a deep sleep, which only a prince’s kiss will break.
On her 16th birthday, Aurora discovers the spindle and pricks her finger. She falls into an enchanted sleep, and the whole palace sleeps with her. One hundred years later, Prince Florimund discovers the palace, hidden deep within a great, dark forest. He wakes Aurora with a kiss.
©2018 ROH. Photographer Tristram Kenton
The Sleeping Beauty holds a special place in The Royal Ballet’s repertory. It was the ballet with which the Company reopened the Royal Opera House in 1946 after World War II, its first production at its new home in Covent Garden. Margot Fonteyn danced the role of the beautiful Princess Aurora in the first performance, with Robert Helpmann as Prince Florimund. Sixty years later, in 2006, the original 1946 staging was revived by then Director of The Royal Ballet Monica Mason and Christopher Newton, returning Oliver Messel’s wonderful designs and glittering costumes to the stage.
The masterful 19th-century choreography of Marius Petipa is combined with sections created for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon. Together they create an enchanting sequence of gems in the ballet repertory – from the iconic Rose Adage, when Aurora meets her four royal suitors, and the lilting Garland Waltz to the Vision Pas de deux, as Florimund sees Aurora for the first time, and the celebratory divertissements and final pas de deux that bring the ballet to its glorious close. Throughout, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s masterful score takes ballet music to a height of passion, sophistication and intensity that arguably has never been surpassed.
The 2020 Royal Opera House Cinema Season is as follows:
The Royal Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty
Live Thursday 16 January 2020, encore on Sunday 19 January 2020
The Royal Opera’s La bohème (co-production with Teatro Real, Madrid, and Lyric Opera of Chicago)
Live Wednesday 29 January 2020, encore on Sunday 2 February 2020
The Royal Ballet’s The Cellist (world premiere)/Dances at a Gathering
Live Tuesday 25 February 2020, encore on Sunday 1 March 2020
The Royal Opera’s Fidelio (new production)
Live Tuesday 17 March 2020, encore on Sunday 22 March 2020
The Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake
Live Wednesday 1 April 2020, encore on Sunday 5 April 2020
The Royal Opera’s Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci (co-production with La Monnaie, Brussels, Opera Australia and Göteborg Opera)
Live Tuesday 21 April 2020, encore on Sunday 26 April 2020
The Royal Ballet’s The Dante Project (world premiere)
Live Thursday 28 May 2020, encore on Sunday 31 May 2020
The Royal Opera’s Elektra (new production)
Live Thursday 18 June 2020, encore on Sunday 21 June 2020
About the Royal Opera House Live Cinema Season
The Royal Opera House celebrates 11 years of live cinema broadcasts in 2019, leading the way in delivering world-class opera and ballet around the world. In the 2020 Cinema Season, our broadcasts will reach more than 1,600 cinemas in more than 53 countries worldwide.
The Royal Opera House has seen huge growth in the influence of independent cinemas in the UK, now collectively accounting for almost half of our network. In addition to being shown in 600 UK cinemas, our productions regularly broadcast to over 1,000 cinemas internationally through our partnership with Trafalgar Releasing.
Audiences are also able to access a vast array of live-streamed and on-demand content via the Royal Opera House’s official YouTube channel, which is the most subscribed YouTube channel of any arts organisation in the world.
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