The Enchanted Symphony

A young boy named Piccolino lives in a village “famous for its charms”. The parks, the people dancing in the streets, the lovely opera house where Piccolino’s father is the maestro all make up a recipe for great happiness. There is a change when too many visitors start to come to town to share all of these wonderful things, buying up souvenirs and indulging in sweets. Life for the locals begins to lose its lustre.
Then something even more sinister begins to happen.

One day Piccolino noticed a faint purple mist

creeping into the village….Trees and flowers began

to wilt. Birds no longer sang, and the sun, moon, and

stars disappeared from view. People grew listless and

dispirited. They stopped visiting with each other, or even

going outside, and the town fell silent.

The maestro’s opera house is eerily quiet without its performers and audiences. Piccolino tries to lift his father’s spirits, but it isn't until he picks out a tune on the grand piano on the stage that something unusual occurs. The drooping palms in the lobby appear to stand up straighter. Father brings in a few ailing houseplants, and they also respond to the boy’s music. Friends and neighbours contribute their own sickly flora. Piccolino’s music helps them, too, yet it is not enough.

Piccolino and his father suddenly knew what to do.

They placed chairs and music stands on the stage, they

laid out pages of sheet music and lit the chandeliers.

They braved the fog one last time to visit every member

of the orchestra. They implored the musicians to rise above

their melancholy and summon the strength to come immediately

to the opera house. There was an audience that urgently needed their music.

The musicians arrive and start to play, at first tentatively and then with more vigour. The greenery around the opera house flourishes, and Piccolino opens the great doors to let the music pour out. As the fog begins to lift, the village comes back to life. People crowd into the opera house, enjoying the opportunity to be together again.

The Enchanted Symphony is a story of the decline and reanimation of a community through music. It was not until I read the authors' afterword that I realized that the story was an allegory about the COVID pandemic and its effect on people’s ability to congregate in groups and especially to enjoy music and the arts in a communal setting.

The rich illustrations take readers from the bright days of the village’s good times to a pall of gloomy purple fog representing the sickness which has overcome the people. At the end, readers come back to sunny skies and a reawakened community. Animated human figures help tell the story against simpler, more abstract backgrounds. The spread showing the orchestra in full performance silhouetted against a glowing stage backdrop is particularly lovely. The pictures have been executed in a form of collage: the note about the medium says that the images were ‘drawn, cut, set up in layers, and photographed with lights’.

Julie Andrews and daughter Hamilton have written a story on a theme clearly close to their hearts. Although the scary days of COVID seem to be past and that reference may be lost on young readers even now, the idea that music can revive a town that has become sick is a positive one. The Enchanted Symphony has a place on many school and library shelves.