3'/2-Ft. Austrians

One of the best youngster programs in Manhattan last week was a puppet show set to music. Austria's famed Salzburg Marionette Theater gave three matinees in one day (starting at 10:30 a.m.) for successive audiences of delighted small fry. With a few changes in the bill, it proved that it could also fill Town Hall with grownups in the evening. As befitted a troupe from his old home town, the Salzburgers did much of their work to music by Mozart.

Grownups got Bastien and Bastienne, a one-act operetta composed when Mozart was twelve; a mime and dance based on Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; a playlet, Mozart Visits the Empress; and a ballet, The Dying Swan, featuring a puppet Pavlova to music by Saint-Sa"ens.

Salzburg's Director Hermann Aicher, in the U.S. with his group for the first time, has been puppeteering Mozart and assorted fairy tales since 1926, when he took over the business from his father. Aicher, 48, his wife Elfriede, their daughters Frick, 23, and Gretl, 22, run the show with three assistants, design the puppets, costumes and sets for the 27-ft. stage. The dolls (adult size: 3- 1/2 ft.) are more supple and lifelike than the popular U.S. or Howdy Doody brand; Cupid shoots arrows, musicians fiddle, puppet birds fly, angels flap their wings, flowers open, horses prance. Aicher & Co. synchronize action and gestures perfectly with tape-recorded music and dialogue.

The Manhattan performances are the last in a tour that has taken the marionettes to 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada in three months. Director Aicher was particularly pleased with their reception in Texas. "It was such a surprise. Even the cowboys liked us."

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