Your little children sing – and dance

It rumbles and rumbles, suddenly he’s lying there. “I know him,” Mirabell murmurs sleepily, pushes her Christmas sleeping mask aside and rubs her eyes: red pointed hat, white beard, a ball of belly. “That’s Santa Claus?” she says and stands questioningly in front of the figure that has tumbled through her chimney. At least he looks like Santa, but he doesn’t seem to know where he is or who he is. A Santa Claus with memory loss – a nice gift and so close to Christmas. A solution has to be found. And Mirabell does what girls her age do now. She picks up her cell phone and calls her friends. Santa needs to be helped. But how? First he is put into Mirabell’s father’s clothes; a Christmas sweater and sweatpants are put on. His friend Trixi has a brilliant idea: “We’ll go to the Christmas market with him. The Christmas carols will definitely help him remember.” You better watch out, you better not cry (…), Santa Claus is coming to town …, is the music in the Puchenau Buchensaal, which is sung to while the first snowflakes dance outside from the already dark sky. The signs in the hall also point to Christmas. Red and white striped socks, pointed hats, reindeer headbands and jingling Grinch shoes dominate the scene at the rehearsal for the Christmas musical by the students of the Upper Austrian state’s “Musical Theater Academy” (MTA).

Today the entire run is rehearsed, even if not everyone is there. “The really big ones are missing,” says Susanne Kerbl. The trained teacher, who studied singing at the Bruckner Conservatory, has been leading the MTA for 13 years.

A talent needs training

The academy’s credo: “A talent needs training,” and this begins early, at around the age of eight, and is built up gradually. The little ones are introduced to the world of musicals in a playful way once a week for one and a half hours. In the lower grades we learn the technical basics of singing, dancing and acting. “The combination of singing and dancing is particularly important, because that’s what musicals are all about,” says Kerbl. Anyone who has completed the so-called basic training can move up to the next level. Teaching is carried out by specialist educators and active artists. In addition, there are so-called Company Days once a month, where the different training levels work together on an annual project, which is then performed.

Another highlight is the annual musical in October. But because this year that was only reserved for older students and guest artists, Susanne Kerbl quickly wrote a Christmas musical “for the little ones,” as she says, and put 15 Christmas songs “that you don’t hear that often” into one Plot embedded in which “Santa is desperately looking for”.

Mirabell and her friends on the rehearsal stage are now also despairing. Neither Benny dressed as Santa Claus nor the sight of snow brought back his memory. “Winter Wonderland” is the name of the selected piece of music, some of which comes from the tape, sung by the students themselves – “for practice purposes, so that they learn to use a microphone, lose their shyness and hear what they sound like,” says Kerbl. Gottfried Angerer does these recording sessions and the musical arrangements. He is currently sitting behind the laptop, playing the musical numbers. Irene Kaltenböck, Susanne Kerbl’s right-hand woman, helps with the costumes and makes sure that no one misses their mission. The entire MTA team is involved on the performance days, says Kerbl. They are all professionals, have studied singing, are trained musicians and/or dancers.

Mia still has to wait, sitting on the floor and watching the older students eagerly. The nine-year-old from Ottensheim is one of the youngest here. She reveals somewhat cautiously that her favorite subject is not dance or singing, but acting. “Mia, get ready,” it suddenly says. Mia is an elf.

Scene change to the North Pole. From there, Mrs Santa looks into the human world through a viewer. She cries and blows her nose into a giant handkerchief. “Where is Santa? Christmas is just around the corner. The packages are all ready,” she sobs desperately.

A long and a short version

While the elf ladies dance and sing “Santa Baby,” Mrs. Santa has had enough. “Bring me the phone. I’ll call the Christ child. He has to help,” she says resolutely and calls her elves over. Mia is ready and the three of them take the telephone to Mrs. Santa in small steps.

The desperate search for Santa lasts an hour, including the use of fairy dust and hypnosis. The two performances today and tomorrow in the Bad Hall City Theater were sold out immediately. “We therefore added an additional performance on Sunday at 11 a.m.,” says Susanne Kerbl.

But the MTA students and their desperate search for Santa can also be seen and heard at the OÖN Christkindl Gala – compressed into nine minutes. Either way. There is great excitement about the upcoming performances. Nervousness? “No, the children are used to it,” the MTA leader waves off: “Most of them are real stage children, as soon as they get on stage they are bursting with enthusiasm and commitment, even the little ones. I don’t think many of them are at all “I’m aware of how many people are watching.”

OÖN Christmas Gala

• It will rise again on December 14th (7:30 p.m.): the gala in aid of the OÖN campaign “Christkindl” in the theater of the Linz State Theater. The students of the Musical Theater Academy have also been part of the gala for years and delight the audience with their performance.
• The program: Eric Papilaya sings and moderates, Chris Pichler reads Christmas stories, the Landestheater dance ensemble shows an excerpt from “Romeo and Juliet”, Chanda Rule (Gospel), the hard choir, Beda with palm tree, also sing: the Goaßlschnalzer Munderfing.
• Maps at: tickets.landestheater-linz.at, Tel.: 0732/7611-400

Come ye Ye Children

You little children come, oh come all of them!
Come to the manger in Bethlehem’s stable,
and see what happens on this most holy night
the Father in heaven gives us joy.

Oh look in the manger, in the stable at night,
look here at the bright shining ray of the little light,
in clean swaddling clothes the heavenly child,
much more beautiful and gentler than angels are.

There it lies, the little child, on hay and straw,
Mary and Joseph look at it happily.
The honest shepherds kneel before it in prayer,
The Angelic Choir floats high above, cheering.

• Children’s choir of the VS Koref sings: “You little children are coming”

A global success

It is said that success has many fathers – including the Christmas classic “Her little children are coming”. Written by the Catholic clergyman Christoph von Schmid as “The children at the crib,” the Protestant elementary school teacher Friedrich Eickhoff from Gütersloh set it to the melody that the Danish composer Johann Schulz had written for a spring song in 1829. In 1832, Eickhoff included it in a song collection that his father-in-law Carl Bertelsmann printed. It subsequently spread across the entire world via northern Germany and America.

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