I'm Obsessed with Carabosse

 I am obsessed with Carabosse from the 1921 production of The Sleeping Princess ballet. She's also known as "the wicked fairy," who was adapted into the character Maleficent in the Disney film. A while ago, I realized that I do not know what happens in the story of Sleeping Beauty, the fairy tale. I never watched the Disney film as a kid, and it just happened not to be among the fairy tales that I was read. So to remedy that, I decided to look up its Wikipedia page. While there, I saw this illustration of the wicked fairy, and I thought it looked so cool!

    I love this design! I especially found the cape striking. It reminds me partially of a butterfly's wings and partially of a volcanic lava pattern. I immediately saved the image to my computer. Upon clicking on it, I learned that it was actually concept art for a costume, designed for a ballet! It was designed by Leon Bakst for the 1921 production of The Sleeping Beauty ballet written by Tchaikovsky. It was first staged in 1890 in Russia, where the titular sleeping beauty, Princess Aurora, was played by ballerina Carlotta Brianza.

Carlotta Brianza as Princess Aurora, 1890

    Later, a man called Sergei Diaghilev and his ballet company Ballets Russes would put on another production of the ballet in 1921. By that time, it had been 30 years, and Carlotta Brianza had retired. But she came out of retirement to play the role of who else but Carabosse! And I think that is so cool, that she first played the hero of the story, and then the villain in another incarnation!

    

    Being impressed with some more of the concept art, I got this desire to see this specific production of this ballet. But I realize how unrealistic that is. I was aware that it most likely would not have been filmed. So, I only had two avenues of seeing what it was really like: Photographs, and costumes.

    Upon a little Googling, I found the website for the London Museum, which has pictures of the costumes from the ballet. The first one I found was the gorgeous cape. 

    It looks cool even when translated into a real, tangible piece of clothing. It's just so vibrant and lively. I think it's been translated pretty faithfully to the concept art. Also, the character has a hunched back, so a fake hunch is part of the costume.

From this page, I also found images of the skirt and bodice of Carabosse as well. We can get a better look at the patterns on the bodice. It's woven in this beautiful metallic color. It partially resembles a fern plant, partially some bones. There are what seem to be animal masks on either side of it. The patterns are present on the arms as well. It gives off this creepy but intriguing feeling.

The skirt follows the same metallic color scheme. This one is covered in large golden circles with embroidered cartoon faces, smiling and frowning. The faces float among a sea of stars, some closer than others. Across its edges are these leaf-like shapes that are made up of the same continuous line. All of the buttons on the garb are these little golden orbs.

The whole dress looks just so, so beautiful! It's just so creative, and it draws from all of these different elements and incorporates them into the design so well. The golden faces, the stars, the golden ferns and spines, animal masks, butterfly wings, lava... It all comes together to create this really visually striking and unique costume. It's so stylish. Carabosse's got drip. Here it is in its entirety:

    But what's a costume without someone wearing it to give it life? I tried to look for pictures of Carlotta Brianza as Carabosse, wearing the costume. They're difficult to come by! Especially in a quality where you can make out what's going on. The highest quality image I could find was one where she's posing with her henchmen. It's her, four giant rats, and a guy who has wolf claws or something:

    

    The skirt is the garment that we can get the clearest look at. The faces create a good contrast that makes them discernible in a black-and-white photo. You can see a bit of the pattern of the bodice on her arm and front as well. The cape is the most difficult garment to make out, it looks mostly dark. I'm not certain if it's the same cape, I think you can slightly see some of the pattern if you look closely. And she's wearing a crown. I can only imagine what this scene must have looked like to an audience member live. To see Brianza acting out her scenes in this beautiful and vibrant costume, and be drawn into this fairy tale world.

    I know, it's watermarked. This was the highest quality version of this image that I could find. There are other scans online but they have far lower image quality. You can buy the image and get an even higher quality image with no watermarks. But I'm not willing to pay like 25 bucks for one photograph. I don't even know why they're allowed to sell this, it's from 1921, shouldn't it be public domain? When you zoom into this one you can notice that it was scanned from print, so you might get diminishing returns on the quality too.

    I was able to find two other pictures with Carabosse in them. This is the higher quality one:

    It's the scene from the prologue where the king and queen are holding a christening party for Aurora, and then Carabosse rolls up with her minions and crashes the party. We can zoom into this one to get a better look:

    Looks fabulous. The background of the scene is actually a painting by the same person who designed the costumes, Léon Bakst. So, we have a color version of it!

    I found another photograph of this scene, but it is in far lower quality.

 

    Still, it gives us a relatively good look at the character and costume, even if it is very pixelated.

   I think someone ought to make Carabosse movie and bring back this costume. I don't care what they do with it. It could be a Maleficient-esque movie, where she's more sympathetic. It could just be a movie where she's the protagonist but she's evil and does evil stuff. Or she could be an old and wise sage like Gandalf in a LOTR-esque story. Or maybe she could be the old and wise and evil sage who makes the hobbits do evil stuff.

So yeah. Three different looks at the same character: The concept art, the costume, and the actress

Image sources:

1. Carabosse illustration by Léon Bakst
2. 1890 The Sleeping Beauty photograph
3. Carabosse's cape from the London Museum
4. Carabosse's bodice from the London Museum
5. Carabosse's skirt from the London Museum
6. Carabosse's entire costume from the London Museum
7. Carlotta Brianza as Carabosse, and her minions
8. Carabosse's hat from the London Museum
9. Prologue from The Sleeping Princess (1921) (higher quality)
10. Prologue scenery painting by Léon Bakst
11. Prologue from The Sleeping Princess (1921) (lower quality)

P.S. I recommend going to the London Museum links and looking through the images. They have various angles and some of them look really cool!