Description
Broadside, in Dutch, 31.5 cm x 25 cm, two-sided and illustrated with a black-and-white cartoon featuring certain characters and personalities, notably Josephine Baker, with the characters depicted labeled in English. With Dr. Podrecca’s proprietary stamp: “I ‘PICCOLI’ Di V. PODRECCA PERM ADRESSE ROMA 33 Via Boezio.” The text of the broadside is in Dutch for Dr. Vittorio Podrecca’s Teatro dei Piccoli in Amsterdam, with laudatory comments from Charlie Chaplin, Bernard Shaw, Pietro Mascagni, Jeanette MacDonald, H. G. Wells, Siegfried Wagner, Henri Lavedan, Pablo Casals, Gabriel D’Annunzio and Eleonora Duse. Also quotes from the world press in London, New York and Paris, Prices for evening performances were 2 florins and for matinées 1.25 florins.
To simply call Dr. Vittorio Podrecca a genius would be to minimize his manifold accomplishments as theater director, puppet designer, librettist-adapter making adult stories understood by children, musical editor selecting excerpts from operas and concertos to fit a child’s attention span, and most important, Podrecca was an impresario for children’s education through his productions. I Piccoli had universal appeal and international success for performances with a live orchestra and singers co-ordinated with the puppet masters.
The Hollandsche Schouwburg, where these performances took place, was deemed a “Jewish theatre” by the Nazis in 1941 and became the place where Jews were ordered to report for “resettlement in the East.” Today, it is part of Amsterdam’s Holocaust Memorial. Opposite the Hollandsche Schouwberg was the Plantage Middenlaan, a nursery where many Jewish children were saved of the 100,000 Dutch Jews deported. Condition fine, fold creases.
Menachem Birnbaum Chad Gadjo Berlin 1920 Spamersche Buchdruckerei
Manuscript Archive Silvia Pfeiffer Tennenbaum Early Material Dated 1935 to 1956
Judaica German Jüdischer Turnerbund Sommerprogramm 1930
