The only spirit which the magician Negrocephalus is able to invoke on that day is the rooster spirit of Gockelhahn. The spirit informs him that his wife, the Gackerackack chick, is hatching a golden egg, which he promises to bring to Negrocephalus. The tired magician goes to his cabinet and asks his famulus Putzlmayer to keep watch. However, Putzlmayer prefers having fun by doing magic, thanks to Negrocephalus’s spellbook. He too invokes Gockelhahn, who comes back with the promised egg. Putzlmayer gets scared after hearing a voice coming from the egg and informs Negrocephalus before fleeing. Whoever is inside the egg keeps asking to be let out, and Negrocephalus starts worrying too. He swears to the being inside the egg that he will not eat it before daring to break the shell with his magic wand. After a series of thunderclaps and lightning, Kasperl comes out of the egg.

String marionette

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Germany

Munich

Manuscript

Birth

Nativity

Myth

Spirits

Wine

Donkey

Rooster

Magic

Sorcery

Learning

Faust

Laziness

Nonchalance

Cheekiness

Fantasy

Parodistic

German

Magician

Famulus

Cock, cockerel

Verschiedene Erscheinungen welche nicht zum Vorschein kommen

Apparition

Kasperl

Prologue

Spectacular turn of events

Magic act

Comical regional accent

Unveiling

Talking animal

Off-stage voice

Object coming to life

Address to the public

Versified passages

Pyrotechnics

Das goldene Ei

The Golden Egg

Pulcinella appears on stage. He cannot find the audience, as he is facing away from them. After a short skit in which the puppeteer explains to him that the audience is on the other side, Pulcinella introduces the performance and warns the audience: “Si vulit’ capì, v’avita vutà” (If you want to understand, you have to turn around). The play starts. Pulcinella talks with his stomach, which tells him through gurglings that it is hungry. A hen comes. Pulcinella kills it, plucks it, and eats it. Then, his stomach lets him know that it is content and wants to sleep. Pulcinella is awakened by a dog that came to eat him, because he has eaten the hen of the dog’s owner. Pulcinella knocks the animal out with a stick. The owner of the dog and the hen, a peasant, comes to get Pulcinella. Pulcinella introduces himself as the owner of the trousers ripped by the dog, and demands to be reimbursed. They settle accounts by beating each other with a stick until Pulcinella kills the peasant. Pulcinella puts the corpse in a casket, and when Death comes to get it and frighten Pulcinella, Pulcinella chases Death away by beating him with the casket. After several lazzi and puns, a carabinier arrests Pulcinella. We then see Pulcinella’s trial. The judge, also playing the prosecution and the defence lawyer, accuses Pulcinella of having murdered the dog’s owner, the dog, the hen, and, above all, of having eaten the hen. For those crimes, Pulcinella is sentenced to death. A monk hears his confession, and blesses him with a macaronic Latin spell which evokes a series of dishes. Pulcinella has to be hanged, but he cannot put his head in the slipknot. He asks the hangman to show him how to do it, and hangs him in his stead.