Ballet for TV by Flemming Flindt and Eugène Ionesco with music by Thomas Koppel played by Savage Rose. First broadcast in 1971. The ballet was first performed by the Danish Royal Ballet, first as a TV show on the Danish public service channel called DR in 1971, then as a performance at the Danish Royal Theatre in 1972. The main part was danced by Vivi Flindt, and Flemming Flindt also starred. The ballet caused quite a stir, partly because of its spectacular nude dancing, but also the catchy music, published both complete on vinyl (which double-lp) and in abbreviated form on vinyl and CD.
Emmerich Kálmán’s THE LITTLE KING (The Ohio Light Opera, 2014 Summer Festival – DVD) Inspired by the love affair of famed French singer-actress Gaby Deslys and Portugal’s King Manuel II, who at age 20 was forced into exile, the plotline of The Little King concerns a boyish monarch who falls hard for a visiting opera singer, unaware that she is the daughter of a revolutionary and plotting his assassination. During her visit to his palace, she has a bomb planted in a bouquet of roses that she has ordered for the king. Only at the last second, when she can no longer resist his charms, does she discreetly defuse the bomb. Their almost-explosive love affair blossoms.
This film is the first adaptation of an operetta written by Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko. It follows the trials and tribulations of Natalka and Peter (Petro). The sweethearts planned to get married; however, Natalka's father does not approve of the marriage because Petro was not affluent enough to keep Natalka in the manner he thought that she should be kept. Petro goes off to earn the required fortune.
A film about Johnny Bode. Schlager diva, Operetta hero, filth musical innovator, enfant terrible, compulsive liar and amoral rogue. Johnny Bode (1912-1983) was very successful in Sweden and Europe. Yet he is today almost completely forgotten. Why? His life was so overwhelming, glamorous, fast and bizarre. So un-Swedish. He became fascinated by the nazism. Was arrested by the Gestapo and detained at Grini concentration camp in Norway. For five weeks. After the war he moved to East Berlin and proclaimed himself a dear friend of the GDR. Later he was deported and returned to Sweden. A time of fencing and small crimes followed. Escaped to Brussels at first and later Vienna. He was, as Juan Delgada, hired by the Vienna Opera to create new operettas. And was very successful. Johnny Bode died exhausted alone and abandoned in Malmö during the summer of 1983.
