The BBC Archive has found missing material from a previous transmission of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty ballet. Dave Mayler, Senior Media Manager, in Information and Archives explains more.
Tonight, as part of the BBC’s ballet season, viewers will be able to see edited highlights of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet, including lost footage that has been recently discovered by the BBC’s archive team.
First transmitted live on December 20th 1959, Sleeping Beauty starred Dame Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes. At that time the BBC used to record live television by pointing the camera at a monitor and filming the screen. This was called a “film recording”.
For the purposes of archiving, two sets of prints were accessioned into the collection, a loanable set and a master archive set.
When BBC Four recently decided re-transmit the archive as part of its ballet season, researchers found that one of the reels on the loanable copy had been duplicated, meaning that the section including the kiss was missing. For those not familiar with the ballet, the famous kiss occurs when the princess is awakened from her 100 year sleep by the Prince. Rather essential to the story you might think!
As a result, in October 2013, Lottie Gazzard, Production Manager for BBC Music Television, contacted Information and Archives researchers to request checks on the archive cans in our master store to see if they were any different to the loanable cans that she had been sent. Lottie had a hunch that the programme reels had been either mixed up or incorrectly labelled.
At the Archive centre in Perivale we ran both sets of prints in sync and found that the set of master cans (normally not loanable) did indeed have additional footage. We made a special DVD for Lottie, hoping that the missing scene would be surfaced and she confirmed that this was the case.
The work was completed by us collaborating with the production team and an external facility to achieve get the best sound and picture transfer.
You can view the re-discovered archive in the clip below:
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Thaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. The Kiss.
The BBC Archive image at the top of the article shows Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes in Aurora de deux, Act III of Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House in 1956.
Dave Mayler is a Senior Media Manager in Information and Archives
See more information about the BBC Ballet's Season plus the final programme Good Swan, Bad Swan. Dancing Swan Lake on Sunday, 9th March.
