SurLa Lune; The Nightingale
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/night...
an annotated version with links for background, history, similar stories and illustrators
Illustration for Nightingale at Sur la Lune
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illus...
Andersen is not generally seen as a political satirist, but at least two of his stories are satire: The Emperor's New Clothes and The Nightingale. Both deal with themes of illusion versus reality and art and artifice. We snicker at the Emporer in his delusion of grandeur as he struts about publicly in his birthday suit. Andersen efficiently strips the veneer from sophistry, baring the absurdity of humanity. But the Emperor in the Nightingale becomes nearly a sympathetic character as he, along with his court, are deluded by the attraction of mechanical wizardry.
The argument of art versus artifice is long recorded, going back to Plato in his dialogues and appearing in the myth of Pygmalion. Stage actors dispute the integrity of film, citing that a clip can be recorded innumerable times and the final product which the consumer buys is actually an art of editing rather than acting. "Put the same person on the stage without the cue cards and see how he does," comes the challenge.
Similarly singers face the same plight. Descending one night from the Galerie in the Wiener Staatsoper, I heard two tourists decrying Lucia Popp. It was one of her last performances, singing the Strauss, Vier Letzte Lieder. The songs are incredibly difficult with long passages of sustained pianissimo with a high tessatura. To make it through the long phrases, one has to have impeccable technique; but to make the phrases musical, one must have more than just physical stamina and training. They were lucky just to hear her, for there would be no more evenings with her on stage. She had been diagnosed with cancer. Probably everyone in the orchestra and within the management of the opera knew that the performances were her bid good-bye. For them, the last words of Abendrot must have been a particularly difficult reminder that she was dying. However, glib tongues are sharp, "She sang better on the recording..." The word floated up to me as I followed them down the sweeping grand staircase. And what do they know of singing on an enormous stage with a hundred piece orchestra at their feet? The cheek.
