Spring is cheering the birds and people up: a child is amazed to see a butterfly take flight, young boys are playing with a kite, and the gravedigger, envious, admires a heron in the sky. His neighbour, a blacksmith, tells him that his wings are ready. He tries in vain to talk him out of his dream of flying. Elsbeth despairs at her husband’s fixation and relates the gravedigger’s dream; the latter is particularly gloomy and worries Elsbeth. Meanwhile, the gardener, who is in love with Elsbeth, easily removes his naïve rival, the poet Blumenstengel (literally, Flower stem) : the latter believes that he has temporarily been transformed into an attractive sunflower. At night, the gravedigger tries over and over to take flight; he invokes the moon and stars before yielding to the devil’s proposal… A few days later, the gardener and the young Elsbeth bill and coo as they praise the flowers of springs; then, devastated, the gravedigger’s wife relates that her husband, who has been missing for some time, appeared to her during the night and ordered her to die after one final and icy kiss. Two graves were dug. At night, the gravedigger calls Death, who takes a long time to come. When the clock strikes midnight, he hurries inside his house with a knife. The following day, it is revealed that he has killed his wife and daughter; he is denounced and sentenced to hang. The gardener mourns Elsbeth and the crowd laments the gravedigger’s madness.

Shadow theatre

Not specified

Kerner Justinus

Germany

Munich

Printed

Deal with the Devil

Madness

Flying dream

Crime

Love

Spring

Counterfeit Money

Tragic

Lyrical

Fantastic

Photo of Dora Polster's scenery and shadow figures for the scene involving Death and a monk (end of the first act), 1907.

German

Gravedigger

Wife

Gärtnermädchen und Tochter des Totengräbers

Daughter

Blacksmith

Gardener

Lover (man)

Poet

Spirit

Sculptor monk

Hunter

King

Young woman

Craftsperson

Death

Skeleton

People

Apparition of the Devil

Song

Instrumental tune

Hidden character

Monologue

Love duet

Graveyard scene

Arrest scene

Der Totengräber von Feldberg

The Gravedigger of Feldberg

The daughter of the emperor Otto bemoans her life as a nun in a convent. In contrast with her, the king of Bohemia, Eginhard, would like to live a secluded life in the forest but the private tutor Dietwaldus manages to arouse his desire for Otto’s beautiful daughter; he also offers to help her escape. A series of metamorphoses blurs the characters’ identities; the nun and Dietwaldus go back between their original form and that of diabolical beings. In the convent, the nun yields to the request of Dietwaldus, who has transformed into a nun himself: she agrees to flee. In his room, the emperor Otto curses his daughter. A magical mirror shows her wedding at the court of Bohemia. The emperor’s death threats reach Eginhard; he regrets having followed Dietwaldus’s advice. The advisor stabs himself with his sword; a devil appears and carries his corpse. The king Eginhard and his wife now live hidden in the Bohemian Forest. The emperor has sent his army to look for them, destroying every neighbouring village. All his men are dead, save for a squire with whom he travels through the woods; they narrowly escape the wolves. They reach the castle in which Eginhard’s court has taken refuge, and go to sleep in a room quickly prepared for them before they arrived. Everyone spies on them through a magical mirror which has been transformed into a window. The king Eginhard and his wife hear the emperor expressing regret. They then walk into the room and ask to be whipped to be forgiven. Moved, the emperor calls for the peace and unity of the kingdom. The heads of the people gathered transform into the heads of animals as well as of poets and philosophers known for their antagonisms and bad blood…

Middle Ages

Forest

Magic object

Forgiveness

Burlesque

Fantasy

Pathetic

Flyleaf of the original edition of Reiseschatten

Dwarf

Emperor

Preceptor

Table

Devil

Bohemian woman

Fairy

Horseman

Teacher

Mouse

Poodle

Metamorphosis

Running gag

Accumulation of events

Mise-en-abyme

Dinner scene

Spying scene

Night scene

Barker

Characters merging with one another

König Eginhard

King Eginhard

Gnafron and Guignol find themselves in a forest, with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. They decide to lie down under a tree. While they sleep, Péterman waits for his midnight rendezvous with Satan to sign a pact. An imp appears and tells him where to find the treasure Péterman is looking for. But there is one condition: the treasure can only be touched by someone who is unaware of its value. Péterman notices Guignol and Gnafron and invites them to his home. Some time later, he offers them a chance to go and “work in the United States”. They both accept without hesitation. During their journey, they have several adventures and end up being swallowed by two large fish, which spit them out near the entrance to the mermaids' cave. There, they meet a tench and a carp who want to marry the two strangers. Later, Guignol and Gnafron see the tench and the carp in the form of two young fairies. Péterman arrives in turn, but the fairies turn him into a monster because he wanted to sell his soul to the devil. Guignol and Gnafron then marry the fairies and become kings of the sea.

Glove-puppet

France

Lyon

Manuscript

Night

Sleep

Treasure

Journey

Patriotism

Shipwreck

Encounter

Wedding

Comical

French

Guignol

Gnafron

Innkeeper

Domestic servant

Monster

Sailor

Fish

Page

Fisherman

Merchant (woman)

Music

Demons dance

Thunderbolt

Comedy of language

Chorus

Aside

Blow-with-a-stick

Off-stage voice

Talking animal

Final wedding

Final song

Le Royaume des poissons

The Kingdom of Fish

The Prologue begins where Molière’s play ended: Don Juan is going down the long stairway into Hell with the statue of the Commander. When he hears Sganarelle scream “My wages!”, he climbs back up to kick his servant, then comes back down. The statue of the Commander is surprised by his courage and offers to bring him back to life. But La Griffe du Diable (The Devil’s Claw) holds Don Juan back by his clothes. In the end, Don Juan is granted another ten years of life, as he makes a deal with La Griffe: during these ten years, he will continue to corrupt women and claim new victims. Ten years later, this extension is about to come to an end. Don Juan lives in Venice and believes that the Devil has forgotten about him. He is getting ready to have dinner and then go out. A puppeteer is passing in the street, and he invites Don Juan to his home, where he performs his show for him. From the glove-puppet booth, Polichinelle talks to Don Juan, who is reminiscing about the shows he saw as a child. Polichinelle kills Pierrot and Cassandre. He is bitten by a dog then attempts to seduce a doll, using Don Juan’s advice, and finally kills her. Don Juan asks that the puppeteer cut some scenes and get to the moment the Devil takes Polichinelle away. Then he provokes the puppet of the Devil by saying that he would not fear being carried off by him. The puppeteer leaves the booth, reveals that he is the Devil and sits at a table to dine with Don Juan. Don Juan enthuses over his conquests. He asks Sganarelle for the list of the women he seduced, which he then tears up. The Devil turns into a violinist and makes the scraps of paper dance: the Shadows of the one thousand and three women seduced by Don Juan arrive in gondolas. The Devil challenges Don Juan to recognise these women, but he gets them all wrong. Don Juan, who believed he had seduced and possessed all these women, realises that they had him wrapped around their fingers, and that even the tears they shed because of him were fake. He claims his victories, but he is told that he never did anything with them, and that he never knew how to love. Out of desperation, Don Juan reminds the Devil about the scale of his provocation when he gave a coin to Le Pauvre (The Beggar) “out of love for humanity”. But the Devil makes the Pauvre appear, and the latter throws the coin in Don Juan’s face and forbids him from claiming that he has embodied any kind of revolt. The Devil proves to Don Juan that he was only controlled by ribaldry, like Polichinelle. Rather than sending him to the fires of Hell, which is what the seducer proudly demands, the Devil sentences him to become a puppet in a booth.

Rostand Edmond

Cambo-les-Bains

Paris

Seduction

Haughtiness

Woman

Lust

Suffering

Presumption

Eternal punishment

Evil

Ridiculous

Revolt

Venice

Satirical

Dramatic

Sketch by George Barbier for the Puppetteer's costume in Edmond Rostand's La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan, 1922.

Don Juan

Commander

Statue

Sganarelle

Poor

Ghost

Polichinelle

Pulcinella

Cassandre

Pierrot

Doll

Play in verse

Puppet theatre within the theatre

Disguised character (false identity)

Metonymy (mode of characterisation)

Apparition

Crowd

Unveiling

La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan

Don Juan's Last Night

Juanín, a member of the Flechas, enters the stage whistling the Frente de la Juventud (Youth Front) hymn “Prietas las filas”. He encounters an old woman who tells him that the princess in her care has been kidnapped by a witch who lives in a castle protected by a giant and a dragon, and that the king’s armies have failed to free her. Juanín decides to save the princess. On his way, he meets two comical characters, Cleofás and Margarito, who try to dissuade him; he then meets the devil Satanas who offers him his help in exchange for his soul, but Juanín refuses. Juanín faces the giant, who is about to kill him when the devil intervenes and saves him. He offers his help again. This time, Juanín agrees to sign a deal with the devil. The published text stops here.

Young audiences

Spain

Tarragona

Quest

Heroism

El Flecha Juanín y el Dragón, Garra, 1944

Spanish

Old woman

Old man

Idiot

Dilemma

Fighting a monster

El Flecha Juanín y el Dragón

Juanín the Flecha and the Dragon

Miséria est un vieux forgeron qui passe ses journées à travailler le fer. Son seul plaisir est de prendre soin de son noyer. Un jour, São Pedro (Saint Pierre) vient lui rendre visite, demandant un fer à cheval. Comme il ne lui en reste plus, Miséria lui propose de prendre celui qui est un porte-bonheur en argent. Quelques temps plus tard, São Pedro retourne chez Miséria, disant qu’il peut demander un souhait. Miséria demande que ceux qui grimpent dans son noyer pour voler des noix finissent prisonniers de l’arbre. 
Quand la Mort arrive pour chercher Miséria, il fait un pacte avec le diable, avec lequel il gagne 20 ans. Au bout de 20 ans, la Mort revient. A ce moment, Miséria lui demande un dernier souhait : qu’elle grimpe à l’arbre pour lui chercher une noix. Ainsi, la Mort devient prisonnière du noyer. Tant qu'elle est prisonnière de l'arbre, le soleil ne se couche plus, il n’y a plus de vent, les feuilles restent immobiles ; le monde s’est arrêté. Miséria finit pas libérer la Mort à condition qu’elle lui promette la vie éternelle. La Mort accepte, mais le prévient qu’il regrettera son souhait. La pièce finit avec le vieux forgeron qui travaille le fer, se plaignant de son sort : son arbre qui était la raison de son existence vient de mourir et il reste condamné à la vie éternelle.

Rod puppet

Adults

Portugal

Porto

Electronic text

Old age

Tree

Tale

Desires

Human condition

Time

Immortality

Philosophical tale

Miséria (Teatro de Marionetas do Porto, 1991)

Portuguese

Saint Peter

Voice

Apparition of a Saint

Narrator

Apparition of Death

Peasant accent

Change of voice

Smoke

Flying character

Miséria

Misère

On a beach by the Tyrrhenian Sea, a woman invokes the devil Serpentone. She wants to ask him to make her invincible and immortal so she can return to her village and take revenge on her compatriots who drove her out, calling her an old witch. The devil arrives, preceded by his deep, dark voice. He is ready to grant her immortality in exchange for something big, something you can see and touch. As the woman has nothing to hand, Serpentone gives her until midnight to find an offering before disappearing into the flames. The woman then prepares a potion in a big pot. Pulcinella, famished, passes by and plunges his head into the pot to eat the soup, but when he stands up again, he discovers he has a big donkey's head. Having effected the transformation, the woman gives the donkey to the devil who takes it to hell where he intends to kill it and make a drum out of its skin. But in trying to kill the animal, the devil frees Pulcinella from the spell. Pulcinella fights with the devil, kills him and escapes from hell to settle scores with the woman who turned him into a donkey. She is about to drink the wine the devil gave her to make her invincible. Realizing Pulcinella wants to kill her, she puts the blame on the audience: she turned Pulcinella into a donkey because the audience asked her to. The "cynical and ruthless" audience responds, saying the accusations are false and the woman is wicked. The audience, thus involved in the performance, finds itself acting out the scene recounted by the woman at the beginning of the show, where her compatriots insult her and drive her out. Pulcinella beats the witch to death with a broom, to much applause from the audience. The moral is that people who are different will always be hunted down without mercy.