LIZSAYS: So, okay, Dick says they must have been flushing the canals. And, as it turned out they were. The water was much less grody the next day and the sun came out to see us.
But better than anything was the ad Dick spotted in the Timeout, a concert of Stravinsky's Nightingale with shadow puppets and more. It was one of the best things I have seen to date and I was shocked that I had seen it in Amsterdam, not Paris. A full orchestra, shadow puppets, a moat with puppets and their masters outfitted as 'Asian' characters. It was over a hundred years old and still awe inspiring and beautiful. The actors did complicated shadow puppets in front of a Chinese lantern. The moat, in the orchestra pit, was used as a river of entertainment, with persistently dancing dragons, the emperor's messengers splashing the water in frustration, and the equally made up puppet masters singing their way through the drama.
The story was basic. The nightingale's voice was so beautiful that the emperor wanted to own him and his voice, but he would not be captured. He always came to the emperor's aid and rescued him from death.
Oh my, the singing, the nightingale's voice sung by a woman with a fluttering bit of a bird. It was just fantastic. And funny, there were bits that sent everyone into laughter, when the puppets in the boat, splashed the water in frustration as the bird frittered off, making their mission fruitless.
Ah, the beauty, the wonder and all of this done when oriental was such a foreign concept. The angular sound of the Stravinsky score still sounded new, the production was glorious.
But better than anything was the ad Dick spotted in the Timeout, a concert of Stravinsky's Nightingale with shadow puppets and more. It was one of the best things I have seen to date and I was shocked that I had seen it in Amsterdam, not Paris. A full orchestra, shadow puppets, a moat with puppets and their masters outfitted as 'Asian' characters. It was over a hundred years old and still awe inspiring and beautiful. The actors did complicated shadow puppets in front of a Chinese lantern. The moat, in the orchestra pit, was used as a river of entertainment, with persistently dancing dragons, the emperor's messengers splashing the water in frustration, and the equally made up puppet masters singing their way through the drama.
The story was basic. The nightingale's voice was so beautiful that the emperor wanted to own him and his voice, but he would not be captured. He always came to the emperor's aid and rescued him from death.
Oh my, the singing, the nightingale's voice sung by a woman with a fluttering bit of a bird. It was just fantastic. And funny, there were bits that sent everyone into laughter, when the puppets in the boat, splashed the water in frustration as the bird frittered off, making their mission fruitless.
Ah, the beauty, the wonder and all of this done when oriental was such a foreign concept. The angular sound of the Stravinsky score still sounded new, the production was glorious.
All I can show you is the poster and the theatre before the performance. Anyone that saw it would have proudly and graciously, "Bravio'd" as did the teens in front of us. The woman next to us had given them a dismissive 'grrrr' before the show, but she was very pleased to find they were very reverent during the show and even appreciated the performance. But, then, who could not!
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