Customer Reviews

The Bird Lovers (Sun & Moon Classics)

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A group of Germans want to turn a small Italian village into a tourist haven for birdwatchers. This would require the natives to give up their habit of hunting and eating songbirds. Meanwhile the the natives--who were former partisans during World War II--recognize some of the Germans as their old Nazi oppressors. Bjorneboe makes surrealistic use of this situation to examine the dynamics of economic globalization in a way which hits even harder today than when the play first appeared in 1966. <I>The Bird Lovers</I> is that rara avis, a musical with a totally original plot. It is to be regretted that the translator did not attempt metrical translations of the songs, leaving us without a stageable version of a play which richly deserves to be known in the English-speaking world.

Last year my class and I put up a play as a special school assignment for the Norwegian subject. We chose "The Bird-Lovers". I won't pretend that it's an easy play, because then I would be lying... but it's a play that becomes a part of you, it makes you think.

As you travel to the small Italian village in the district of Torre Rosse you get to know the hunters and the bird-lovers You meet Caruso, Rosa, Piccolino, Cavalli, Marco, Fidele and Sandro. They are the partsans who fought against the Germans during the war, and who suffered because of it. Thus when the German bird-lovers come to form a paradise for the birds they do what they can to stop them and bring the old judge to justice.

It's a play about capitalism, racism, injustice and women's rights, and frankly it is one of the finest plays ever written. If you're in need of quotations to use of any occasion this is the play. Any remark'll do. And the poetry is amazing. I guess "Song to Hiroshima" is the most known one but the rest is great as well.

As I said. It is a great play and we really enjoyed putting it on. It gave us something, still 30/40 years after it was written. Enjoy.

This is one of the best writers in the world, and this is a very good play - It is about killing birds. I think the writer is finish or maybe form Holland

The author is Norwegian, and wrote a book in the 60's that was banned until the early 90's!