Sleeping Beauty was another hugely ambitious project for Walt Disney and, initially, the public were not quite on his wavelength. The result was extraordinary, and Bruns was eventually nominated for an Academy Award for Best Scoring Of A Musical Picture for Sleeping Beauty. There was a musicians’ strike in the United States, so Bruns was sent to a state-of-the-art recording studio in Berlin to record with the prestigious Graunke Symphony Orchestra. And when Bruns struggled to find a melody in the original ballet to fit a scene – as with “Skumps,” sung by King Stefan and King Hubert to toast the children’s upcoming wedding – he simply wrote a melody in the style of Tchaikovsky.Īs with the animation, Disney spared no expense when it came to the recording of the soundtrack.
Costa’s remarkable vocal talents were also to the fore on “I Wonder,” in which the nature-loving Princess Aurora duets with friendly woodland birds before launching into a bewitching melody based on the third strain of “The Garland Waltz.” Elsewhere, the stirring “Hail to the Princess Aurora,” sung by the heroine’s adoring subjects, was based on the march from the ballet’s prologue. “Once Upon A Dream” was the romantic centerpiece of the movie, a swooning waltz that is reprised when Prince Phillip (played by Bill Shirley) breaks the spell cast upon the princess. Bruns spent three years studying and experimenting with Tchaikovsky’s music, working closely with the filmmakers to emulate the film’s visual style in its music.Ĭosta was the perfect choice for the role of Princess Aurora – the young actress’ operatic range meant that she could do the songs justice. Walt later revealed, “Our inspiration for Sleeping Beauty was the wonderful score by Pyotr Tchaikovsky for his ballet version of the fairy tale.” Bruns was a musical all-rounder, a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and musical director who had played with jazz bands and worked in broadcasting, as well as scoring short films and cartoons. Earle’s meticulous attention to detail and interest in pre-Renaissance, Gothic, and Medieval art created a new kind of heavily-stylized aesthetic for a Disney picture, as he recalled in the 1997 documentary Once Upon A Dream: The Making Of Sleeping Beauty, “ a great amount of research into Medieval painting and architecture before we arrived at the right styling for this picture.”Īnother pivotal point came with the appointment of George Bruns as the film’s composer.
#Disney princess sing along songs once upon a dream movie
The film only began in earnest when Disney – who wanted the movie to look like a “moving illustration” – appointed one of the studio’s star artists, Eyvind Earle, as color stylist and artistic director.
Work on Sleeping Beauty also took a back seat in the mid-50s because Disney was pouring many of its resources into opening Disneyland.
Listen to the Sleeping Beauty soundtrack now. You’re in trouble if they start saying, ‘Haven’t we done this before?’” You’ve got to give the creators new things to work with, so they’ll be able to keep their enthusiasm up. He later said, “It had many of the elements we had already used in Snow White and Cinderella. But Walt was concerned that these early sketches risked a repetition of former glories and asked staff to go back to the drawing board. Planning for the movie began in 1950 and a completed storyboard presentation was given in July 1952 by studio staff. Walt Disney first discussed making an animated feature film of French author Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairytale – in which the beautiful Princess Aurora was magically awakened by a dashing prince – as far back as 1938. Most importantly though, thanks to its timeless storyline, fantastic animation, and beautiful soundtrack, Sleeping Beauty has cast successive generations of movie lovers under its spell. It was the first Disney animated feature to be photographed in widescreen (using the then-cutting edge Super Technirama 70 process) and also the first to have a true stereo soundtrack. With costs running to $6 million, it was the most expensive animated feature film there had ever been. Sleeping Beauty was one of Walt Disney’s most spectacular movies at the time of its release in January 1959.
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