Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco (“Sleeping Beauty”), a “musical fairy-tale in three acts”, is one of his most unassumingly charming pieces. It was originally written in 1922 for Vittorio Podrecca’s famous puppet company, I Piccoli, and was apparently so popular that it stayed in their repertory for over 20 years. Respighi revised it in 1934 as a mime play for children (as with the puppet original, adult singers and actors are placed in the orchestra pit). It tells the familiar Perrault story, in quick-fire doggerel verse, with the difference that 300 years elapse between the evil fairy’s magic spell and the arrival of the handsome prince. Thus Act 3 takes place in 1940, still some way in the future when even the revised score was prepared, but it provides Respighi and his librettist with the opportunity to introduce a party of American tourists to the plot, led by Mr Dollar Cheques, bizarrely portrayed here by the conductor of this performance. He and his party arrive to the sound of a cakewalk, and the happy ending is celebrated with a foxtrot.
Otherwise the music is characteristically colourful, despite the use of a modest orchestra (single wind only, plus strings, piano, celeste and harpsichord), and its lyricism is genial and relaxed. It is toy music at times, quoting or distancing emotion rather than expressing it ardently, quite appropriately to a fairy story much of whose action is danced. With the arrival of Prince April (Guillermo Dominguez, a capable lyric tenor), the music no less appropriately grows warmer. The scene of the Princess’s awakening (to bird-song in the woodwind, and then an amply lyrical love duet) is effective. So is the very simple but striking slumber music earlier on, the excitably girlish music of the Princess herself, and the delightful humming chorus of spiders, weaving cobwebs to enshroud the sleeping castle. It is, in short, a very pretty miniature opera, giving Respighi more opportunities than most of his other opera plots to demonstrate a neat sense of humour and a rather touching, childlike fantasy. It is admirably performed (the sparkly coloratura of Adriana Kohutkova especially effective) and cleanly recorded.'