The Mozart Question

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However, as the interview begins, Paolo takes the opportunity to tell her his life story, including the answer to mystery. The production delivers a feeling of the desperate, heart-rending choices faced by those forced to serenade their families and kin to death.

David Wood, chair of Action for Children’s Arts, said Morpurgo is “one of our greatest storytellers”.Foreman's illustrations of Venice, the setting of the story, are full of deep, rich blues. These contrast with the concentration camp illustrations painted with a greatly muted palette of hazy blues and grays which serve to heighten the emotional intensity of the story. At the centre of Paolo’s story is his family, and we are given lots of examples of the ups and downs they shared. These aspects of family life are something which many of us can relate to, but they are also things which the victims of the Holocaust would have experienced as well. Whilst we cannot imagine how it felt to have been separated from our families in the way that the victims were, remembering that each person who died in the Holocaust had parents, grandparents, siblings and so forth helps to restore the humanity which was systematically taken from them. It also highlights that although these individuals and their families may have lived in a different time, a different space and had different beliefs, they were not fundamentally that different from you or me.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Michael Morpurgo’s stories move from happiness and joy to human catastrophe in an inkling. He tells his tales through the eyes of adults and the eyes of a child – often one and the same, simultaneously. His writing is intensely dramatic, his characters endure extraordinary psychological journeys, and he is unflinching in his pursuit of emotional truth. This, combined with characteristic exuberance and joie de vivre , is what makes his work so theatrical. What is the significance of people from different countries being involved in the Holocaust? What does this tell us?Michael Morpurgo is one of the UK’s best-loved authors and storytellers. He was appointed Children’s Laureate in May 2003, a post he helped to set up with his friend Ted Hughes in 1999. He was awarded an OBE for services to Literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2007. He has written over 120 books, including Kensuke’s Kingdom which won the Children’s Book Award 2000 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children’s Book Award and the Carnegie Medal in 2000. His novel, Private Peaceful, a harrowing story about the First World War, was published in autumn 2003. It won the 2004 Red House Children’s Book Award and the Blue Peter Book Award in 2005. His latest novel is Shadow published by Harper Collins in September 2010. A reporter sent to Venice to interview world-renowned violinist Paolo Levi is told she can ask him anything about his life and career, but on no account must she ask him the Mozart question. But it is Paulo himself who decides that it is time for the truth to be told... Kindertransport The name given to a rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the war. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany and the occupied territories of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels and farms. Accurately billed as suitable for eight-year-olds and above, it is told in primary colours. If sometimes the dialogue in the first half is clunky, and if sentiment can turn sententious—"Don’t you stop believing in the good"—this is a worthy, disturbing yet entertaining piece of theatre for a family audience. As defeat became increasingly likely, the Nazis went to great lengths to disguise their crimes. All evidence of the death camps in Poland – Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno – was erased; facilities were dismantled, pits were filled in, and trees were planted. After the Soviet Red Army captured Majdanek almost intact in July 1944, the Nazis began to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, when the camp was liberated in January 1945, the ruins could still be seen.

A young journalist, Lesley, was sent to Venice to interview a world-renowned violinist, Paolo Levi, about anything in his career except the Mozart Question. Lara Lewis exudes effervescent naïvety both as the young reporter sent to interview Gino’s son Paolo, who carries forward his father’s Mozart secret, and the young Paolo himself. The play is performed by nine actors, eight of them also professional musicians, and searing though the story might be, it’s composer Rudy Percival’s musical rearrangements that speak most eloquently in Jessica Daniels’s production. Join us for our magnificent Festival launch night, brought to you in collaboration with York Minster and The Ebor Lectures. However, Paolo decided to tell her his secret, his childhood memory of how he became a professional violinist.National Socialism – Nazism – was always intended to be more than just a political movement. Politics and political power were seen as the means by which the Nazis could implement their ideology and reshape German, and eventually European, society. Culture would be crucial to these aims, and this was evident in the creation of the Reich Chamber of Culture. Through this institution Germany’s arts and culture were brought into line with Nazi beliefs, with art and artists that echoed Nazi ideology encouraged and promoted. A good demonstration of this was the work of Richard Wagner, a German composer whose compositions were enthusiastically embraced by the Nazi Party. In contrast, any art or artists that did not conform or fit into the way the Nazis believed the world should be were discriminated against. Such works were considered to be ‘degenerate’ and a threat to the well-being of German culture.