Oliver Messel (1904–1978), British artist, interior designer, and stage and film designer

Oliver Messel studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and is best known the 1946 production of The Sleeping Beauty he designed for the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet at Covent Garden. This now-legendary staging of the Marius Petipa/Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky classic underwent several set and costume changes during the 1950s and 1960s and was finally replaced with completely new designs by Henry Bardon and Lila de Nobili in 1968. Messel’s designs for The Sleeping Beauty also formed the basis of the production danced by American Ballet Theatre in 1976 and were partly restored by The Royal Ballet in 2006 in a production overseen by Peter Farmer.

Messel designed for C B Cochran’s revues during the 1920s and 1930s, notably the “Dance Little Lady” routine in This Year of Grace (1928) as well as numerous plays and musicals, including Ivor Novello’s Glamorous Night, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with Vivien Leigh and Robert Helpmann) and The Tempest (with John Gielgud and Alec Guinness) at The Old Vic. Other ballet designs by Messel include David Lichine’s Francesca da Rimini for Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe, and Frederick Ashton’s Comus and Homage to the Queen for Sadler’s Wells Ballet.