MARYCOSTA, the original voice and physical inspiration for PRINCESSAURORA in SLEEPINGBEAUTY (1959)
“Silent Night” nearly drove songbird Mary Costa to silence. On the way home from a church play in which she had warbled the Christmas classic, she announced she was giving up singing, “because I saw them crying.” Her mother, hastening to correct her daughter’s misconception about the weepy watchers, told her: “Oh no, no, no. That’s not because they didn’t like it. Sometimes people are moved by singing. They like it very much.“
And so did Walt Disney 16 years later, when he heard Costa audition for the role of Princess Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty” in 1952. After a long search, he had found the singer who could do justice to “Once Upon a Dream” and “I Wonder” in a fairy tale about how true love conquers all. Disney have positioned himself behind a screen, so he could hear but not see Costa, just as the audience would.
Costa remembers that Disney later told her, “He wanted a high voice to match the style of the Tchaikovsky music and a more classical voice, but he wanted the words to be easily understood. He wanted a voice that could negotiate very easily in the high register, so it would be understood as well as a pop song, and that’s what I had done since I was a vey small child.”
It had been destiny and a dinner party date with her future husband that led Costa to the job. “He thought there would be a lot of influential musical people there. After dinner, we were singing around the piano, maybe 10 or 12 of us.” To her right stood a most impressed choral director who asked if she were a professional singer and if she wanted to audition for “Sleeping Beauty.” The next day, she auditioned.
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn’t be. AliceinWonderland (1951)
elizabeth. usa. 
