  Wow! We went to see the Salzburg Marionettes tonight at Murray. I had thought it was last Thursday, but no... anyways, wow! They have been around for 90 someodd years, and they're out of Austria, with only six weeks of United States tours, and we were fortunate enough to get one night of them at the MSC Fletcher Auditorium.
They presented "The Magic Flute" by Mozart, and it was an outstanding performance. Being an opera, most of it was singing and all of the singing was in German so it was difficult to follow at times, but overall it made sense to Diamond and me.
The sets were unbelievably detailed and even though I know they only had about 10-15 feet to work with, the depth and perspective of the sets gave the illusion of 40-50 feet in the foreground, and a limitless background. Mountains, deep forests, caverns, and the expanse of a star cluttered sky were all wonderfully portrayed. The puppets were wonderfully articulated and skillfully danced, run, walked, flown... you name it. They picked up props, ran away from bursts of flame, played the flute.. I really can't describe it all in the way it should be seen. If you ever, ever have the opportunity to see them, I heartily encourage you to do so. Tickets can run as much as 50$ per person, but I assure you, it is worth the cost, assuming you have some inkling of culture woven into your being.
Now, with that out of the way, I must relay to you, my reader, the absolute torment wrought upon me by the couple immediately to our left during the show. Five little girls and one little boy, loud, talking, crying, arguing over who gets to use the binoculars (even though we were only on the fifth row from the front of the stage), fighting about who gets to sit in mommy's lap, and the parents didn't try to calm them down or correct them, for the most part. Once or twice they managed a "shhhh" but overall, the children were very poorly behaved and the parents were indifferent. It annoyed me, and at times people in the back of the auditorium could be heard shushing loudly, apparently for these little demons beside us.
These presentations serve as Humanities credits for students who require them for their diploma. Now, we are in Oklahoma, mind you, and thus very few individuals here actually have any culture to them. At the end of various scenes the cods in the back would whistle loudly and whoop and holler. The word "infidel" was invented for people like these. I did enjoy the presentation, though, and if given the chance in the future, I will enjoy seeing them again. 
