(Credit: Charlie Kinross)

The Victorian Opera is set to open its new season with a staging of “Sleeping Beauty,” featuring 27 life-size puppets at the Palais Theater between Feb. 20-26.

Ottorino Respighi’s opera will be directed by Nancy Black, who features marionettes replaced by life-size marionettes. Phoebe Briggs conducts the orchestra and a cast of singers including Georgia Wlkinson, Dimity Shepherd, Liane Keegan, Stephen Marsh and Carlos Bárcenas.

“This production presents a community in mourning who choose, as mankind has done since the
evolution of language, to tell themselves a story that will assure a way out from their grief,” stated director Nancy Black in a press release. “It is funny as well as sad, contemporary and classical, the past and future meet and find a new way forward. Love makes everything possible. Of course! Wholly relevant in 1921, it is doubly so now!”

The opera originally premiered in 1922 for Vittorio Podrecca’s puppet company I Piccoli.