PÙNKITITITI!

The acclaimed production by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre, written for the 2020 Salzburg Mozart Week, celebrates its Viennese premiere! One might well wonder: what’s a giant octopus doing in a hotel room, while Mozart’s music plays? And what’s going on with this opera singer, who seems to be having a mid-life crisis? Ask Pùnkitititi. That’s what the thirty-year old Mozart called himself when, while on his travels, he decided to give humorous names to himself and those close to him. His Constanze became Shabla Pumfa, and the name he gave to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin, as Mozart informed him in a letter from Prague, was Hikkiti Horky. But Enrico, an opera singer who has more than his fair share of doubts about life, doesn’t see anything to laugh about. With Mozart’s music playing, the objects in his hotel room start to come to life around him. The situation becomes ever more bizarre, as over fifty items – including some puppets – lead Enrico and the audience on a search for the meaning of life. “This is a homage to Mozart’s tireless spirit of discovery, which combines humour, tension, opera, the imaginary world and real life”, comments Florian Willeitner, the creator of the piece. Willeitner took Mozart’s pantomime “Pantalon and Columbine”, KV 446, as his base, then constructed a musical collage out of Mozart melodies – some of them familiar, some unknown, some of them cheerful, and some tragic – and arranged them for his multiform, multidisciplinary ensemble Pool of Invention. A University Mozarteum Salzburg production, in cooperation with the Salzburg Marionette Theatre.