Salzburg Puppet theatre

This guide to the Salzburg Puppet theatre traces the invention of the harp-shaped control bar by sculptor Anton Aicher, who trained in Vienna before apprenticing late in life to a Munich puppet master known as Papa Schmid. It follows the theatre's 1913 opening with Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne and the family line that kept the craft alive after him, from his son Hermann to his granddaughter Gretl. Look two meters above the stage, at the hidden bridge where a puppeteer works a horizontal control bar and strings barely a meter and a half long.