Tuttifäntchen
Music: Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)
Libretto: Hedwig Michel (1892–1982) and Franziska Becker (1874–1942)
Translated into Czech by Ondřej Hučín
“How many composers are capable of writing music without the vision of attaining fame, and how many venture […] to sing sincerely and openly about a fir tree, a wooden puppet and a devil, enthralling children’s pulsating hearts with a simple yet singular music?“ wrote the critic Karl Holl in the wake of the world premiere of the opera for children Tuttifäntchen, held on 13 December 1922 at the Hessisches Landestheater in Darmstadt. Three days after the opening night, the piece was also staged at the Frankfurter Opernhaus, which would perform it to great acclaim until the day in 1933 when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
Bearing the secondary title “A Christmas fairy tale with song and dance”, the opera tells the story of the master woodcarver Tuttifant and his puppet, Tuttifäntchen, which comes to life and runs wild. Created without a heart, he gets up to constant mischief. Possessing miraculous powers, the puppet steals the heart of the woodcarver’s daughter Trudel, and the two set out into the world… They cause havoc at a Christmas market and join a marionette show directed by Meister Punoni, before heading into the forest, where Tuttifäntchen realises that he was made from a tree and that woods are his true home. When the puppet embraces a fir, it absorbs him. Trudel is left alone and, given that she does not have a heart, her strength wanes rapidly. Luckily, her father and her friend Peter retrieve the heart and Trudel is saved. The story ends happily, as fairy tales, Christmas ones in particular, usually do.
In his opera Tuttifäntchen, the German composer Paul Hindemith, who was also a fine painter with a passion for sports and trains (he possessed a 300-metre railway model with remotely controlled switches and signal devices), employed melodies of folk music and Christmas carols (including the Czech song We Bring You the News), also integrating jazz elements (the foxtrot in the Dance of the Wooden Puppets). A new Prague production of the enchanting opera, which will receive its Czech premiere, as arranged and translated by the dramaturge Ondřej Hučín, at the Estates Theatre, is being prepared by the conductor David Švec and the director, mime artist and choreographer Radim Vizváry, Artistic Director of Laterna magika. The audience can look forward to a fabulous performance, featuring songs, dance, mime, acrobatics and, naturally, puppets.
