"LA CANTATA DEI PASTORI"
(The Sheperd's Cantata)
An adaptation of a 17c. Neapolitan Christmas play
told in music and dance by masked characters and puppets.

The play is set just before the birth Christ, during Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem, and the devil has dispatched his demons to stop the saviour's birth. Their escapades are entwined with those of Razzullo, one of the Pulcinella masks here depicted as a comic, mischievous Neapolitan scribe to is always hungry. Conjuring up tempests, dragons and other unseemly tricks, the demons try to do away with the play's characters but all are under the Angel Gabriel's protection and the holy couple finally reaches Bethlehem. Before good triumphs over evil, there is an incredible clash, in dance between the archangel and the devil and a grotesque, but humorous, depiction of heaven and hell.